Getting Access to the Wide Internet in Your Hyper-V Virtual Machine

2021-04-26T00:00:00-07:00

I’m using Hyper-V on my workstation to run a Ubuntu Linux virtual machine.

I recently moved and changed my office setup. Previously I had a Cat 6 cable into a 2.5G Realtek Ethernet Adapter running into my router, plus a SFP+ DAC cable running into a 10G switch to connect to my local network server.

With the move, though, I wanted to simplify the setup. I’m no longer using a Cat 6 cable and 2.5G NIC to get Internet access. Now I’m only using the small 10 gigabit switch, the Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+IN, and that cable supplies my internal and external network needs.

I highly recommend this setup even if it’s just for a local connection. It’s really cool to saturate RAID’ed drive transfer speeds when moving my videos around. If you’re curious, here’s a longer post detailing how I did it all: 10 Gigabit Networking Between Home Server and Computer.

The problem is that removing that 2.5G network cable broke my VM’s internet access.

In this post, I’ll detail what happened and how to fix it.

Losing Internet Access from Hyper-V Virtual Machine

How does Hyper-V manage networks? What are “virtual switches”?

Hyper-V creates a virtual switch to connect your VM to your physical switch.

If you open up Hyper-V and right click on the server (the name of the Hyper-V host, a.k.a. the name of my workstation), you can click on Virtual Switch Manager… to open up some helpful settings.

My workstation has four virtual switches:

The first listed there is the Realtek 2.5G network card I created
The second listed is the default that Hyper-V created
The third listed is one tied to my WiFi network card that I created
The fourth listed is one tied to my 10G network card that I created

There are quite a few settings when making these virtual switches, but they are described well.

How to Create a New Virtual Switch in Hyper-V

When you click on New virtual network switch, the dialog asks what type it should be.

External switches give you access to the outside network
Internal switches connect your VMs on the same server and your host OS
Private switches connect only your VMs on the same server

If you want to get wide internet access, you need a new External switch.

The next screen allows you to pick the “Connection Type”. Since my 10G network adapter is what I want to use, I selected that.

Then, I also created one for my WiFi adapter in case my wired connection is ever down.

Add the New Virtual Switch to the Hyper-V Virtual Machine

Now that I have made the virtual switch, I need to tell the virtual machine that it’s there.

In the Hyper-V manager, right-click on your VM and select Settings….

Now, if you previously had a virtual switch there, it’s likely you still have the network adapter listed there. If you click on it, you can change the virtual switch.

After hitting Apply, you’ll likely need to re-authenticate into your VM. But let’s go in and see if we have access to the network now.

This little network icon in the top right of the screen gives me hope! Let’s open the Network settings now.

Beautiful! And if we test internet access in the web browser, it works.

Success!

Extra Credit: Adding the WiFi Switch to Our Hyper-V Virtual Machine

As a backup and as further practice, let’s add the new WiFi switch as well.

Back in our virtual machine’s settings, we want to Add Hardware. Select Network Adapter and click Add.

Then select the correct switch and hit Apply.

WiFi switch selected

And then let’s check our network settings in ubuntu again.

Awesome! If it looks like the network card is there, but you’re getting a “cable unplugged” message, just make sure your WiFi is turned on in your host machine.

Conclusion

That’s it! I’m excited to be up-and-running once again with my virtual machine.

Good luck!

Fancy New Windows Terminal

2020-06-07T00:00:00-07:00

I have a buddy who recommended switching to z shell as my terminal. He showed me some pictures and it looks nice and pretty, so I started researching.

Most results suggested installing Cygwin and then using the Cygwin terminal to install z shell. I went and did all that, it seems cool, but when I tried that apt-cyg install zsh, I received an error that said the certificate had expired. It wouldn’t install! Let’s try to find another solution.

Enter Windows Subsystem for Linux

I’ve been wary about trying this. It seems pretty new still, but the install directly from the Windows store was SO EASY. I have high hopes.

Just enable Windows Subsystem for Linux, find your Linux distro and install. I went with Ubuntu because I’m familiar with it.

I found this article from howtogeek.com to be really helpful: “How to Use Zsh (or Another Shell) in Windows 10”.

Install oh-my-zsh!

As a total newb, I don’t even know what kind of upgrades I could expect to make to my shell. Here’s an article on becoming a command line power user. You’ll walk through the new shell, theme, and adding customization.

Install PowerLevel10k

Here’s a Z shell theme recommended to me. I was on board as soon as I saw the pretty colors, but I’ll probably stay forever due to the Dragon Ball Z nostalgia.

Check out the manual there as there’s plenty of things you can do. I would at least install the fonts they recommend and see how you like them.

Annoying Windows Alert Sound

I found my Windows was making that terrible du-da-duuunn sound every time I double tabbed in the new shell. I figured I probably don’t want the terminal to play sounds, so I just opened the “volume mixer” in Windows and muted the console window.

Wrapping Up and Next Steps

Turns out there’s a lot of customization available. Definitely look into different plugins and try using the ones you think you’ll be using a lot. And I encourage you to get creative with your aliases as well.

Start Coding Now - windows