Help: “The network bridge on device /dev/vmnet0 is not running”

This error message occurs sometimes in VMWare Fusion on the Mac when using a certain networking setting. This setting, in particular, is the “bridge” function. “Bridge”, as opposed to “NAT”, means the Virtual Machine gets its own IP-address on your local area network. The “NAT” (Network Address Translation) option, however, makes your Mac act like a router behind which the VM resides. This makes the VM inaccessible to the outside LAN, but it still has access to the outer LAN or Internet.

Bridging for VMs is nice because this is a way you can set up a VM to act as a server – serving printers, web resources, media and files. But sometimes, VMWare Fusion behaves awry, throwing up the dreaded exception:

“The network bridge on device /dev/vmnet0 is not running”

This will cause the VM to be disconnected from the network. There’s no real indication what causes this. Neither does it allude to how to fix it. “Just a Blog” provides a solution:

  1. Close the ailing VM
  2. Open the “Terminal” from Applications/Utilities
  3. Type:
    cd /Library/Application\ Support/VMWare\ Fusion/
  4. Type:
    sudo boot.sh –restart
  5. You may get a message warning you of the perils of sudo. Proceed.
  6. Re-open the VM and make sure network bridging is re-enabled through the Fusion’s “Settings” interface.

You should now be able to access the network through the respective VM. It may occur that this error crops up again. It seems to me that it happens arbitrarily. I wonder why Fusion can’t execute this command by itself, either.

I hope this helped :-) .

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  • RmACK

    Thanks a million, you solved my problem!
    It wasn't verbatim for me, I had to put a ./ in front to run the script and use 2 dashes:

    sudo ./boot.sh –restart

  • lannylevenson

    I am having the same problem and went to applications utilities and then terminal. Typing the command cd/library/applicationssupport/vmwarefusion/ and then sudo boot.sh-restart told me that the command was not recognizable. Am I in the right place or what am I missing. VMFusion was working fine yesterday and today, with no changes what so ever, isn't allowing me to connect to the network.
    Thanks

  • sevenlegs

    Worked great for me. I too had to use:

    cd /Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/
    sudo ./boot.sh –restart

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