Just a quick note: I use VirtualBox daily at work. It provides excellent emulation for my original XP install (the one that came pre-installed on my Dell box!) while my main OS is Ubuntu. Setting up networking is not as straightforward as with VMWare, so here is what I had to do:

First, edit /etc/udev/rules.d/20-names.rules and make sure this line exists:

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KERNEL="tun", NAME="net/%k"

Then create this script – you will run it whenever you wish to reconfigure your network:

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#!/bin/bash
echo "Erasing old configuration"
sudo route del default
sudo ifconfig tap0 down
sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo ifconfig br0 down
sudo brctl delbr br0
sleep 1
 
echo "Creating virtual interface"
sudo chown chris /dev/sdc1
sudo tunctl -t tap0 -u chris
sleep 1
echo "Creating bridge interface"
sudo brctl addbr br0
sleep 1
echo "Making physical interface promiscuous"
sudo ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0 promisc
sleep 1
echo "Binding bridge to physical interface"
sudo brctl addif br0 eth0
sleep 1
#sudo ifconfig br0 10.255.203.34 netmask 255.255.255.0
echo "Configuring IP address"
sudo ifconfig br0 198.206.186.210 netmask 255.255.255.0
# sudo dhclient br0 # The new way!
sleep 1
echo "Binding bridge to virtual interface"
sudo brctl addif br0 tap0
sleep 1
echo "Enabling virtual interface"
sudo ifconfig tap0 up
sleep 1
#sudo route add default gw 10.255.203.254
echo "Adding default route"
sudo route add default gw 198.206.186.254
echo "All done!"

What’s that, then?
We start by getting rid of any existing configuration; then I change my virtual interface device’s owner to my own user, since I am logged in as a non-root user. Obviously you need to replace ‘chris’ with your own user name. From now on, tap0 will be the virtual interface seen by VirtualBox.
I make sure that my real interface is in promiscuous mode, which then allows me to bind it with a bridge interface.
All that is left to do it configure my bridge interface so that it can take over communicating with the rest of the world!

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