macOS 10.13.3 - Host Only Networking - Host not accessible

[Edoardo]

After installing macOS update to 10.13.3, VirtualBox 5.2.6 host only networking started to show an issue never seen before. VMs on the same hostonly network can communicate, while VM-host, in both direction, communication does not happen, every attempted connection times out

Eventually I worked around the issue with a host restart, but every new host-only network created is defective. This is a big issue for example when using vagrantfiles to create clusters of VMs.

create a vboxnetX hostonly network in the VBox UI, with DHCP enabled start a simple VM defined to use vboxnetX (eg vanilla ubuntu with DHCP) : host will NOT be reachable from VM, VM will NOT be reachable by host

shut down VM restart macOS !!! vboxnetX adapter is now NOT listed by ifconfig (before VB starts)

start VBox (-> vboxnetX created but not assigned an IP)

start the VM previously defined as using the vboxnetX adapter vboxnetX will be assigned an ip ... and this time VM/host communication works

[Edoardo]

I have reproduced the issue with Virtualbox 5.2.6 5.2.4and 5.2.2 I have not tried older versions

[DonaldBell]

I have reproduced the problem on OS X 10.13.6 and VirtualBox 5.2.18

[janitor]

What is the output of ifconfig when the system is in the state where you have the VM started but it cannot communicate with the host. Also, please, attach VBoxSVC.log obtained when the system is in that state.

[Sam Hauer]

I have reproduced this misbehavior on VirtualBox 5.2.18 on MacOS 10.13.6.

I have three (3) CentOS VMs running, with identical configurations except for hostname and IP address, all on the same host-only network. Two of the three can ping each other. The third cannot ping the other two. I see from the 'arp' command on the third host that it can only resolve the gateway of the host-only network, and gets no further.

[ebarrere]

This bug apparently still exists in MacOS 10.15.2 with VirtualBox 6.0.14 r133895.

For the record I've run a packet capture from the host while trying to ping a VM and the packets are leaving through the wifi interface rather than the vboxnetX interface, and I see no entries in the routing table for the associated subnet. I do see routes in the guest for the network, and ARP entries for the vboxnetX interface.

Is there a fix planned? Without a stable host-only network I have no way of reaching my VMs on boot.

[tongliofibm]

This has been a problem for a very long time. Can someone please fix this issue? this is very frustrating. Whenever there is a mac OS update, this issue will show up. The only work around I found is to remove all host-only network, completely shutdown mac (reboot wont work), restart mac, then recreate all host-only network, then pick the network for a VM, this really needs to be fixed. I am guessing this problem may have something to do with Mac OS X permission/security changes. But in any case, VB should not behave like this.