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Oct 24

kvm/qemu bridging with dummy network card

Tag: Uncategorized — Ignace Mouzannar (-ghantoos-) @ 8:34 pm

I wanted to setup some VMs using kvm (i had the same problem using xen). The solution a chose to connect my VMs to the internet was to do it through bridging.
My only problem is that my eth0 (main and only ethernet card is connected straight to the Internet. So bridging loses its meaning because I could not choose new IP addresses for my virtual boxes.

The solution: creating a dummy network interface!

With this scenario, i’ll have all my dumUs bridged to the dummy interface (dummy0) and the bridge (br0) NATed through eth0. I hope I’m clear enough. : )

Here is how my /etc/network/interfaces file looks like:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback# The bridge network interface(s)

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
        bridge_ports dummy0
        bridge_maxwait 0
        address 10.1.1.1
        netmask 255.255.255.0

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Now restart your networking (sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart)
The outout of your ifconfig should look like this:

br0       Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr D2:EA:4F:D1:B9:76
          inet addr:10.1.1.1  Bcast:10.1.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::d0ea:4fff:fed1:b976/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:272660 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:495913 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:14516784 (13.8 MB)  TX bytes:736380564 (702.2 MB)

dummy0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr D2:EA:4F:D1:B9:76
          inet6 addr: fe80::d0ea:4fff:fed1:b976/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING NOARP  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:217 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:31032 (30.3 KB)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:30:1B:BC:17:38
          inet addr:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX  Bcast:81.67.67.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::230:1bff:febc:1738/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:651487 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:391485 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:866501509 (826.3 MB)  TX bytes:32927949 (31.4 MB)
          Interrupt:16 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:161 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:161 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:33971 (33.1 KB)  TX bytes:33971 (33.1 KB)

The ip of eth0 (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX) is supposed to be your PUBLIC IP.

Now let’s create the script that will be used for the bridging when lauching your virtual machines: qemu-ifup

#!/bin/sh

BRIDGE=br0

ifconfig $1 0.0.0.0 up
brctl addif $BRIDGE $1

To NAT br0 behind eth0, this is magic!

sudo /sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

It is now time to setup our virtual machines using kvm and qemu.
We first create the harddisk image using qemu:

qemu-img create your_OS.img -f qcow 6G

Launch the installation of the OS using your CDROM:

kvm -no-acpi -m 512 -net nic -net tap,ifname=tap0,script=/path/to//qemu-ifup -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d your_OS.img

Launch the installation of the OS using an iso file:

kvm -no-acpi -m 512 -net nic -net tap,ifname=tap0,script=/path/to//qemu-ifup -cdrom /path/to/install_image.iso -boot d your_OS.img

Install your OS. If your are asked to define an IP, define an unused IP address neighboring the one defined for br0 (e.g. 10.1.1.2).

To avoid entering this everytime, create a shell script:

#!/bin/sh

/sbin/iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

kvm /path/to/your_OS.img
        -net nic
        -net tap,ifname=tap0,script=/path/to/qemu-ifup
        -m 512
        -smp 1
        -no-acpi
        -localtime

et voilà!

Hope this helps,

cheers,

Ghantoos

Sources:
http://imil.net/wp/?p=152
http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/~djw/qemu.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM

kvm/qemu bridging with dummy network card

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