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.