Handling MAC addresses in VM

We are working on setting up all our UNIX and Linux courses as guests in VMware workstation. There are many advantages of taking this route, as there are some penalties. We setup a 'master' VM, then ghost it, which allows us to dump an image on demand. Once we have used this method for a while, I might elaborate a bit more, with more insight...

In the meantime, just a comment on preventing new images from duplicating original MAC address in Linux configuration. All this is new for me, but our techie in Swindon has sent me an e-mail documenting the solution. Thanks, Martin!

"If you don't do this before taking the image, each subsequent VM that you deploy will have the same MAC Address and you get that annoying "did you copy or move the VM" question on first boot......The fix is...

1. Delete the file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules [in the guest]
2. Shutdown the VM
3. Find the .vmx file on the host (in this case, D:\VMRun\Linux C\Linux C.vmx). Edit it with Wordpad and look for 2 lines called uuid.bios and uuid.location. Underneath those 2 lines, add a line as follows:

uuid.action = "create"

4. Save the file and take the image"