ports/149949: Problems with DHCP on startup in Open-VM-Tools VMXNet driver

[Bill Lortz]

>Number:         149949
>Category:       ports
>Synopsis:       Problems with DHCP on startup in Open-VM-Tools VMXNet driver
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-ports-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Tue Aug 24 23:40:06 UTC 2010
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Bill Lortz
>Release:        8.1
>Organization:
Premier America Credit Union
>Environment:
FreeBSD xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 8.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE #0: Mon Jul 19 02:36:49 UTC 2010     root at mason.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64

>Description:
sysinstall will let you configure the VMXNet devices(vxn0:) with DHCP and the device successfully obtains an IP address when running sysinstall.   Unfortunately, at boot time, no attempt is made to acquire a DHCP address.


I suspect that there is a bug in the driver that causes it to not send the appropriate link-up stage change to trigger DHCP.   That is why SYNCDHCP is needed.   But, the patch to vmware-guestd is probably necessary even if the driver is changed so it starts earlier.

Bill 
>How-To-Repeat:
Use sysinstall to configure the open-vm-tools ethernet driver and then reboot.  
>Fix:
I was able to solve this by changing the rc.conf line configuring the device from ifconfig_vxn0="DHCP" to ifconfig_vxn0="SYNCDHCP"

But, I also had to change the following line in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/vmware-guestd so that it would start before "netif".

From:
# BEFORE: LOGIN

To:
# BEFORE: LOGIN netif


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: