Vagrant - The NAT configuration file for VMware Workstation can not be found

May 25, 2014

I started using VMWare workstation few weeks back before I started fiddling with Vagrant.

Due to some stupid reason I messed up VMware's Virtual Network configurations and removed all other virtual network connections except virtual network - Bridged (Auto-bridging).

VMware - Bridged only virtual network connection

In my mind - "I don't need NAT or Host-only virtual network, duh"

This worked well till the day I started using Vagrant for automation of my developement environment.

On my first run of vagrant and I get a red error saying:

The NAT configuration file for VMware Workstation can not be found. Due to a bug in VMware Workstation at the moment, Vagrant requires this file to workaround the issue. Please verify your installation of Workstation is valid. If this problem persists, please contact support.

My Vagrant was simple as you can see:

# -*- mode: ruby -*-
# vi: set ft=ruby :

# Vagrantfile API/syntax version. Don't touch unless you know what you're doing!
VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = "2"

Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "precise64"
  config.vm.network :public_network
end

I searched through lots of post, Q&A and forums but was not able to get this problem to go away.

I found solution to this problem when I Restore Default network configuration in VMware - Virtual Network Editor.

After this restore my network configuration looks something like this:

VMware network connection after Restore default

Vagrant uses NAT only virtual network connection for vagrant ssh where it would drop you into your newly create Vagrant VM machine via SSH (user: Vagrant).

So there should be a NAT only virtual network connection for vagrant to work as expected.

Yoda is watching !!

Hope this helps !!