8.38. VBoxManage dhcpserver
From Oracle VM VirtualBox
The "dhcpserver" commands allow you to control the DHCP server that is built into VirtualBox. You may find this useful when using internal or host-only networking. (Theoretically, you can enable it for a bridged network as well, but that will likely cause conflicts with other DHCP servers in your physical network.)
Use the following command line options:
-
If you use internal networking for a virtual network adapter of a virtual machine, use
VBoxManage dhcpserver add --netname <network_name>, where<network_name>is the same network name you used withVBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --intnet<X> <network_name>. -
If you use host-only networking for a virtual network adapter of a virtual machine, use
VBoxManage dhcpserver add --ifname <hostonly_if_name>instead, where<hostonly_if_name>is the same host-only interface name you used withVBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --hostonlyadapter<X> <hostonly_if_name>.Alternatively, you can also use the
--netnameoption as with internal networks if you know the host-only network's name; you can see the names withVBoxManage list hostonlyifs(see Section 8.4, “VBoxManage list” above).
The following additional parameters are required when first adding a DHCP server:
-
With
--ip, specify the IP address of the DHCP server itself. -
With
--netmask, specify the netmask of the network. -
With
--loweripand--upperip, you can specify the lowest and highest IP address, respectively, that the DHCP server will hand out to clients.
Finally, you must specify --enable
or the DHCP server will be created in the disabled state, doing
nothing.
After this, VirtualBox will automatically start the DHCP server for given internal or host-only network as soon as the first virtual machine which uses that network is started.
Reversely, use VBoxManage dhcpserver
remove with the given --netname
<network_name> or --ifname
<hostonly_if_name> to remove the DHCP server again
for the given internal or host-only network.
To modify the settings of a DHCP server created earlier with
VBoxManage dhcpserver add, you can use
VBoxManage dhcpserver modify for a given
network or host-only interface name. This has the same parameters as
VBoxManage dhcpserver add.