Silly Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Question!

GOCAT9 on 16/11/2016 - 12:34

I am so newbie at this, its not funny.

I have successfully installed VirtualBOX on a laptop Windows 7 platform and then installed UBUNTU 16.04 LTS inside of that.

My laptop only has a WIFI connection to the internet. However, in UBUNTU, I cannot see any WiFi SSIDs when I press the small up/down arrows in the top RHS of the screen. It says "Wired connection 1" (highlighted), however using the embedd Firefox, shows that internet IS working!

So it seems to me that if I want to search for and connect to any SSID, I need to do that from the windows side (outside of UBUNTU) and then connect to 'wired connection 1" again from with Ubuntu.

Is this a 'yes silly, of course you have to do it this way when you run a virtual machine on a Windows machine. If you only has Ubuntu on the machine (sole OS), then you would change SSID from with Ubuntu" type of answer.

I tried to look at stacks of Youtube Ubuntu videos on my wifi problem, but none mentioned what I am talking about here.

Any comment appreciated. Am I correct or not?

Computing

Comments

  • trustnoone on 16/11/2016 - 12:43
    +1

    Is this a 'yes silly, of course you have to do it this way when you run a virtual machine on a Windows machine. If you only has Ubuntu on the machine (sole OS), then you would change SSID from with Ubuntu" type of answer.

    I could be wrong and I wouldn't call it a silly question, but this is basically the case. You don't have 2 wifi cards in your computer (one that your normal OS uses and one that your virtual machine could use) you just have the one wifi card that your actual laptop (and OS) uses which shares its internet through the virtual machine so it displays it as a "wired connection".

    If you installed Ubuntu natively then yes you would get the list of SSID to connect too.

    You could also change how your network connects through the virtual machine by checking out the network settings of said virtual machine.

  • aerom on 16/11/2016 - 12:52

    You need to look at network settings of your virtualbox.
    Is your virtualbox connected to your Windows via eth? In that case only eth is the only way it can interact with Windows (and internet consequently).
    Your Ubuntu is sandboxed inside the virtualbox and whatever virtualbox provides is what you can see and exploit.
    hope this helps

    • GOCAT9 on 16/11/2016 - 13:03

      Yes, 'Connection Information' says the interface is Ethernet(enp0s3). What you are saying appears consistent to what I am experiencing, ie I control Wifi connections from within the Windows environment.

  • retiredfeline on 16/11/2016 - 12:57

    There are several ways the networking of the guest OS can be set up. Most common is the default which is NAT, where the guest OS relies on the host OS to provide network connectivity. If you want the guest OS to have more control over the interfaces change that to bridged.

  • Diji1 on 16/11/2016 - 13:18

    The guest virtual machine can only see what it's "hardware" (Virtualbox) sets up for it.

    What is happening is the guest sees the virtual network card that Virtualbox gives VM's by default. The fact that the virtual network card is actually WiFi doesn't matter to the guest, it just sees an ethernet card.

  • GOCAT9 on 16/11/2016 - 13:30

    Thanks guys, that's all pretty consistent with what I am seeing. I wasn't aware that since Ubuntu is a guest OS, then the network connections (e.g. WiFI etc) are controlled via the host OS (Windows) (at least for a NAT setup as greenpossum pointed out??). Learning heaps here!!

    • ESEMCE on 16/11/2016 - 14:25

      If you ran Ubuntu natively you would see WiFi network options as you do in Windows.

      I actually run Ubuntu off a USB3 hard Drive on my work laptop… works perfectly fine
      Windows is my "work" environment and Ubuntu is my "home" environment.
      All my home activities stay separated from my work activities (apart from browsing OzBargain.. that's a just a whole life activity)

    • Diji1 on 16/11/2016 - 15:12

      It's Virtualbox that's controlling what hardware the guest Ubuntu has, not Windows.

      Windows will see virtual network adapters which you can control partially like a normal network adapter though.

Login or Join to leave a comment
Login Join