Mac OS X virtual machine hangs when you enable/disable ethernet adapter using command line

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• On systems running Mac OS X, the network adapters that are part of the hardware configuration of the virtual machine show up as interfaces such as en0, en1, etc.
• If you use the command line to disable and enable such an interface, the MAC OS X virtual machine hangs.
• If the command sudo ifconfig enX down/up is executed, the virtual machine hangs.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware Fusion 3.x

Cause

When the command sudo ifconfig en0 up is used, the device driver on Mac OS enables the device in two steps. First, it enables the Transmit/Receive function and then enables interrupt delivery. If the device has pending interrupts, they are delivered as soon as interrupt delivery is enabled. When the device delivers the interrupt, the driver / Mac OS sees this as an unexpected event and hangs.

Note: this article applies to Mac OS X running within a virtual machine. This article does not apply to a Mac OS X host running other virtual machines.

Resolution

To work around this issue, disable or enable the interface through the Graphical User Interface:

1. On the Apple menu bar, go to the Apple Menu > System Preferences.
2. Click Network preferences.
3. Disable or enable the appropriate interface:
   
   
   • To disable the Airport (wireless interface), click Turn Airport Off.
   • To enable the Airport (wireless interface), click Turn Airport On.
   • To disable the Ethernet adapter, select Off from the Configure IPv4 menu.
   • To enable the Ethernet adapter, select the appropriate option (such as Using DHCP or Manually) from the Configure IPv4 menu.

Additional Information

For more information about configuring network adapters in OS X, see Apple's Knowledge Base article Solutions for connecting to the Internet, setting up a small network, and troubleshooting.

Note: The preceding link was correct as of August 26, 2011. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.