Using m0n0wall in a VM for testing

Question

I'd like to use m0n0wall inside a (VirtualBox) VM to play about with and see what it can do. Ultimately the goal is to have a number of virtual machines connected to a internal virtual network which goes through to the m0n0wall VM, and then the m0n0wall box connected to the internet through NAT or a bridged addaptor on my host machine. I can find out how to set the LAN and WAN addresses, but this seems to be only for using m0n0wall as a router intead of attached to another router.

Let's see if I can diagram this:
[Virtual Machine]->->-Internal (VM Only) Network ->->-[m0n0wall VM]->->-Bridged/NAT Addaptor->->-["real" router]->->-Internet.

Can anybody suggest how I should do this or am I thinking m0n0wall isn't meant to be used like this?

Answer 1

I think your setup seems fine. You'll want to do is create a host-only network within Virtualbox and assign all your VMs to that network. Then, the m0n0wall VM should have two virtual NICs, one attached to the host only network and the second a bridged adapter.

Using this setup, make sure the m0n0wall VM knows which NIC is which. Then, it should start a DHCP server on the virtual network, assigning IPs to the VMs and setting itself as their router. You're good to go.

See the VirtualBox manual for more information. Specifically:

To change a virtual machine's virtual network interface to "host only" mode:

either go to the "Network" page in the virtual machine's settings notebook in the graphical user interface and select "Host-only networking", or on the command line, type

VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --nic<x> hostonly;

see the section called “VBoxManage modifyvm” for details.