For those that run VMware Fusion, the “/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion” directory on the Mac is a wealth of information.
$ cd /Library/Preferences/VMware\ Fusion/
$ ls -l
total 40
-r--r--r-- 1 root wheel 31 Nov 17 11:01 lastLocationUsed
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 548 May 5 2018 license-fusion-100-e3-201704
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 689 May 5 2018 license-fusion-100-e4-201704
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 547 Dec 6 2013 license-fusion-50-e3-201202
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 547 Apr 10 2014 license-fusion-60-e3-201303
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 547 Oct 31 2014 license-fusion-70-e3-201404
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 688 Oct 25 2014 license-fusion-70-e4-201404
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 547 Jun 23 2016 license-fusion-80-e3-201505
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 740 Nov 3 05:54 networking
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 740 Aug 7 20:23 networking.bak.0
drwxr-xr-x 10 root wheel 340 Nov 17 11:01 thnuclnt
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 Dec 6 2013 vmnet1
drwxr-xr-x 7 root wheel 238 Dec 6 2013 vmnet8
$
The license-fusion… files have your license keys as well as other information in them. But today, the jewel for me is the networking file:
$ cat networking
VERSION=1,0
answer VNET_1_DHCP yes
answer VNET_1_DHCP_CFG_HASH E08B... ...D0D8
answer VNET_1_HOSTONLY_NETMASK 255.255.255.0
answer VNET_1_HOSTONLY_SUBNET 172.a.b.0
answer VNET_1_VIRTUAL_ADAPTER yes
answer VNET_8_DHCP yes
answer VNET_8_DHCP_CFG_HASH 2031... ...F498
answer VNET_8_HOSTONLY_NETMASK 255.255.255.0
answer VNET_8_HOSTONLY_SUBNET 10.c.d.0
answer VNET_8_NAT yes
answer VNET_8_VIRTUAL_ADAPTER yes
...
This file defines the networks that your host-only and nat network adapters use. VMware appears smart enough to avoid network collisions e.g. using 192.168.1.0/255 for the NAT adapter at vmnet8 when that’s also the network configured on your home router.
According to this article (VMware login required), simply editing this file and restarting VMware Fusion’s networking component should change the dhcp setting that your machine uses. Any skilled system or network administrator should be able to get their hands around that.
Finally, the lines that specify DHCP hashes appear to be the mechanism that VMware uses to detect changes in the networking file. If you dig deeper, there’s a directory for vmnet1.
$ ls -l vmnet1
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1575 Nov 17 11:01 dhcpd.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1575 Nov 17 11:01 dhcpd.conf.bak
$ cat vmnet1/dhcpd.conf
# Configuration file for ISC 2.0 vmnet-dhcpd operating on vmnet1.
#
# This file was automatically generated by the VMware configuration program.
# See Instructions below if you want to modify it.
#
# We set domain-name-servers to make some DHCP clients happy
# (dhclient as configured in SuSE, TurboLinux, etc.).
# We also supply a domain name to make pump (Red Hat 6.x) happy.
#
###### VMNET DHCP Configuration. Start of "DO NOT MODIFY SECTION" #####
# Modification Instructions: This section of the configuration file contains
# information generated by the configuration program. Do not modify this
# section.
# You are free to modify everything else. Also, this section must start
# on a new line
# This file will get backed up with a different name in the same directory
# if this section is edited and you try to configure DHCP again.
# Written at: 11/17/2018 11:01:21
allow unknown-clients;
default-lease-time 1800; # default is 30 minutes
max-lease-time 7200; # default is 2 hours
subnet 172.a.b.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 172.a.b.128 172.a.b.254;
option broadcast-address 172.a.b.255;
option domain-name-servers 172.a.b.1;
option domain-name localdomain;
default-lease-time 1800; # default is 30 minutes
max-lease-time 7200; # default is 2 hours
}
host vmnet1 {
hardware ethernet 00:50:56:x:y:z;
fixed-address 172.a.b.1;
option domain-name-servers 0.0.0.0;
option domain-name "";
}
####### VMNET DHCP Configuration. End of "DO NOT MODIFY SECTION" #######
$
This is just a standard dhcpd.conf file as you would see if you ran isc-dhcpd. The interesting thing is that the hash is what you get if you do this:
$ sed -ne '/VMNET DHCP.*Start/,/VMNET DHCP.*End/ p' vmnet1/dhcpd.conf | shasum
e08b... ...d0d8 -
The more you know…