Need help with VM networking + VPN

[GionnyBanana]

 EDIT: It turns out the issue was that I was creating "my new wifi" with the apple system preferences tool... When creating it with the terminal like this

sudo networksetup -createnetworkservice "my new wifi" en0

it works... Maybe the system preferences tool was not binding it to en0. Weird...

Anyway now I have another problem. When the VM activates the VPN, I can see that the host reaches the VM, but its packets never get a response. Is there a solution for this? Not sure if my nat config is not working for the returning packets or if the vpn only allows packets sent from the VM itself... (the vpn is GlobalProtect)

 

Hi forum!

I am tackling a project I know nothing about, I need some help if possible

Basically, I have a M2 macbook with macOS 15.2 with Parallels, which runs a VM with macOS 15.2.

The VM has access to a VPN that I also need in the host, but I cannot have that same VPN in the host directly for reasons.

I would like to have the host route everything through the VM to get to the internet so that I can take advantage of the VPN in the host too.

Is this achievable? I have been trying to add port forwarding and nat in the vm's pf and set the vm address as the default gateway for the host but nothing has been working for now.

Here is what I tried so far:

• Setting up port forwarding in the VM with

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

• Setting nat in the vm's pf.conf with

nat on en0 from <host ip> to any -> (en0)

• Setting a pass for ping calls in the pf.conf too (I know I shouldn't use any, it was just to see if it was working)

pass in quick proto icmp from any to any

• Setting the default gateway in the host as the vm by creating a new network service and setting the gateway

networksetup -setmanual "my new wifi" <host ip> 255.255.255.0 <vm ip>

At this point I can ping the vm from the host, but as soon as I try to access the internet the ping doesn't work anymore even between host and vm until I restart the connection in the vm. From the vm instead internet works fine.

Hopefully someone can help me out with this!

Thanks.

[E-waste]

On 12/20/2024 at 9:34 AM, GionnyBanana said:

I would like to have the host route everything through the VM to get to the internet so that I can take advantage of the VPN in the host too.

Is this achievable? I have been trying to add port forwarding and nat in the vm's pf and set the vm address as the default gateway for the host but nothing has been working for now

You may need a virtual bridged networking adapter.

 

I use Virtualbox for this and during installation, it asks about four times if you want to add virtual adapters.  The bridged one allows exactly what you are trying to do.

 

I use it to route DNS through my virtual machine with pi-hole, and keep the gateway on the host normal, so all dns requests first route to the VM, and then if successful, will be somehow routed back out of the vm, to the host, to the internet to get an ip address for that website.

 

No idea how this works, but it is quite amazing.  I have also used virtual bridged networking mode to try learning various firewall software such as PFsense and IPFire.  I route the host through the ip address of the vm, and the vm then goes back out to the host system somehow, to reach the normal network gateway.

 

It also allows more virtual network ports than you have physically on your system, so there are a lot of possibilities.