Guide to Bridged Networking

To set up bridged networking for the macOS VM, use one of the following methods:

Using /etc/network/interfaces

It is possible to create the bridge and tun/tap interfaces by adding the following lines to /etc/network/interfaces. Replace DEVICENAME with your ethernet card's device name, and MYUSERNAME with the user that is starting the VM.

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
  bridge_ports DEVICENAME tap0

auto tap0
iface tap0 inet dhcp
  pre-up tunctl -u MYUSERNAME -t tap0

Using NetworkManager

You can use NetworkManager to control the bridge and tun/tap interfaces, by creating them with the following commands. Replace DEVICENAME with your ethernet card's device name.

Make the Bridge

nmcli connection add type bridge \
    ifname br1 con-name mybridge

Attach Bridge to Ethernet

nmcli connection add type bridge-slave \
    ifname DEVICENAME con-name mynetwork master br1

Make the Tun/Tap

nmcli connection add type tun \
    ifname tap0 con-name mytap \
    mode tap owner `id -u`

Attach Tun/Tap to Bridge

nmcli connection mod mytap connection.slave-type bridge \
    connection.master br1

Attach Bridge to QEMU

Once you have set up the bridge and tun/tap on the host, you'll have to add the following line to basic.sh, replacing -netdev user,id=net0. Change tap0 to your corresponding device name.

    -netdev tap,id=net0,ifname=tap0,script=no,downscript=no \

You can optionally use the vmxnet3 driver for higher performance compared to the default e1000. Note that replacing it requires macOS El Capitan or higher.

    -device vmxnet3,netdev=net0,id=net0,mac=52:54:00:c9:18:27 \

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