# Installing in Windows 7 VM - Networking Issue



## dsavitsk (Jun 16, 2011)

Hi all,  I am trying to install FreeBSD in a Windows 7 virtual machine on a laptop.  The idea is to use the install to run Apache and mod_python plus a few other things and to mirror what my real webserver looks like, so I can develop web pages. I'll set up a Samba share such that I can edit the pages in Windows and FreeBSD will be able to instantly see changes.

The issue is with networking.  If I have my laptop connected to a wireless router, the FreeBSD installer cannot get networking info via DHCP, and cannot install via the network. I gather that trying to configure WPA2 in order to do an install over the network is not an easy task.  If I plug in the computer to a wired ethernet, then DHCP works OK, but since I rarely do this, the FreeBSD install will lose this connection once it is disconnected.  

I also tried setting the VM networking option to NAT, and still could not get DHCP working.  My guess is that this is the right way to do it, and that it is a matter of some settings in the "Extra Options to ifconfig" screen. The detected ethernet driver says 
	
	



```
de0 DEC DE435 PCI NIC or other DC21040-AA based card
```

Any suggestions on how to proceed? The only computer that needs to access this install will be the laptop it is running on, and this laptop rarely leaves this network.

Thanks!


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## wblock@ (Jun 16, 2011)

What VM software?  VirtualBox with NAT does this easily.  FreeBSD running in a VM doesn't know or care where the upstream network connection originates, wired or wireless.  With NAT, port forwarding has to be set up, but that's easy with VirtualBox 4.


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## dsavitsk (Jun 16, 2011)

The VM that comes with Window 7 that XP runs in.  I've tried VirtualBox on a different computer and it hosed all the networking connections.  Maybe VMWare is OK, but I'd rather just use what's here if it is at all possible.


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## wblock@ (Jun 16, 2011)

VirtualBox on Vista has worked fine for me, running mostly FreeBSD 7.


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## wblock@ (Jun 16, 2011)

There's actually a section on installing FreeBSD on "Virtual PC", the Windows 7 VM, in the Handbook.


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## dsavitsk (Jun 16, 2011)

... which is for an older version of Virtual PC, and which does not address this issue.


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## dsavitsk (Jun 17, 2011)

OK, well, I did a basic install from a CD rather than trying to do the network install.  That works fine, and the CPU utilization issue from the Handbook seems to have been fixed one way or another.  However, I am still unable to get the network working, and it seems like it must just be a driver issue.  Anyone have any familiarity on how to solve this?


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## dsavitsk (Jun 17, 2011)

Off topic a bit: this is the issue I had with VirtualBox (which was trying to get FreeBSD running on another laptop for another reason): http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&p=185436

It looks like they are up to 4.0.8 (4.0.6 had the issue), so I'll upgrade and give that a try.  VMWare is probably not going to work for me for other, unrelated, reasons.


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## dsavitsk (Jun 25, 2011)

I ended up installing VMWare Player, and FreeBSD runs great in there.  Did a network install and everything.


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