Ok, so we got a new iMac. Hooray for us! Now what do I do? Start tinkering of course. I’d read a lot about VMWare Fusion (virtualization software for running virtual computers inside a running OS), so I installed it and started my 30-day evaluation, and one of the first things I wanted to do in it was install uTorrent (my favorite torrent client) because I was sick of Tomato Torrent (a Mac client) not responding to the trackers, and I didn’t want to have to reboot into XP everytime I wanted to start a download.
Anyway…after installing uTorrent in the virtual machine (XP), it occurred to me that I was going to have problems with port forwarding. I didn’t know how Fusion handled port forwarding and networking in general between my host machine (the iMac) and the virtual machine. Read on for the walkthrough of my solution…
Ok, so the first thing is to do the basic forwarding at the router level. Below you can see that I’m forwarding the uTorrent traffic to my Mac’s IP (192.168.1.100).
Now, we’ll need to look into where some TCP/IP settings are stored for Fusion. I found a couple .conf files in this path: “/Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/vmnet8/”. The “vmnet8” is a reference to my particular virtual machine, so you’ll need to find the appropriate directory for your VM. Below you can see the .conf files in that directory.
Before we can edit one of these .conf files, we need to know what IP address is going to be the destination of the Mac’s traffic forwarding. The easiest way to get this is to bring up your virtual machine, get to the command prompt and use the “ipconfig” command. It will list your IP address (mine is 192.168.200.129 below), so make a note of it and let’s move on.
Next, we’ll need to edit the nat.conf file. I do all my system file editing through the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) using the “sudo pico ” command.
Edit however you’d like, you’ll just need root permissions I think. Once in the nat.conf file, move down to the bottom “incomingtcp” section. I added a line at the end: “41921 = 192.168.200.129:41921”. This means that port 41921 (my uTorrent port) gets forwarded to 192.168.200.129 while also sending it along the 41921 port which is what uTorrent is listening on. This makes Fusion pass along traffic like it never saw it. See below for where I inserted this line.
Finally, you’ll need to restart all your Fusion networking processes. I found a few commands online to accomplish this, but I couldn’t get any to work, so rebooting my Mac seemed to do the trick the best. After rebooting, bring back up the Virtual Machine, bring up uTorrent, and try it out! It should work!
The Splendiferous Zeppelin Escapades of the Jeppys 
I speak all languages but Greek. This was certainly “Greek” to me.
Dad
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Intuitive AND Easy!
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We LOVE uTorrent. Glad you figured out all the quirks. It is definately worth it.
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You can also tell your virtual machine to connect to the network directly (as if it were a separate machine) rather than sharing the host’s connection. Under the “Virtual Machine” menu item, choose Network > Bridged (default is usually NAT, which shares the connection with the host). Then restart your virtual machine, and it should have its own IP. You can then tell your router to forward the port of your choice directly to the virtual machine. Easier than editing config files IMO.
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Makes pretty good sense to me; certainly, the simpler option. I’m always glad to have a legitimate reason to dig in, though, because I always learn a lot of collateral things.
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“Then restart your virtual machine, and it should have its own IP.”
And where would I find the IP of my vmware machine ?
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marc: Start -> Run -> cmd -> ipconfig
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hmmm, I’m using eMule, I set the router to forward the ports to my computer, and I edited nat.conf as you said, but it doesn’t seem to work.
I also tried the bridged connection, which has a weird effect and doesn’t work either. I can see the virtual machine from the router, it has an its own IP address (192.168.0.3; my iMac is 192.168.0.2), I can access the vm’s webserver (an eMule service) at 192.168.0.3 from the vm’s browser, but I can’t access it from my iMac’s browser.
When I found this topic I thought I had found the solution to my problem… =/
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Very cool design! Useful information. Go on!
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