VMWare Fusion: Bridged Network Using a Bonded NIC

I'm attempting to set up a virtual machine in VMWare Fusion (2.0.5) but am having issues getting bridged networking to start. Whenever I start a virtual machine that I wish to use bridged networking I am given the following error: "The network bridge device on /dev/vmnet0 is not running".

Running sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMWare\ Fusion/boot.sh --restart does not fix this. An attempt to edit boot.sh to bind to bond0 instead of en0 wasn't successful.

On this server it's currently running Mac OS X Server 10.4.11 but will be updated to Mac OS X Server 10.6 in a couple months.

So, is it possible to use bridged networking with VMWare Fusion on a Mac that has a bonded network link? Is this only a Tiger limitation?

EDIT: Upgrading to Snow Leopard and 2.0.6 had no effect.

From serverfault Chealion

• Try the Tokamak Networking Scripts for VMware Fusion, they provide advanced networking setup and might possibly do what you're looking for...

  WARNING: If you have a Home Directory protected by FileVault, DO NOT INSTALL FROM WITHIN THAT DIRECTORY! It will mess up FileVault (happeend to me once)

  EDIT: You might also try this thread on the VMware community forums. An exerpt for you:

  After seeing this post by powervm: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/151384?tstart=0
  
  I was able to get bonded nics/link aggregates to work.
  
  edit /Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/boot.sh and look for the vmnet-bridge section and edit accordingly.
  
  vmnet-bridge puts itself in background (daemon mode)
  Bridge to host network interface 'en0'.
  "$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 en0
  Bridge to host network interface 'en1'
  "$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet2.pid vmnet2 en1
  #"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet3.pid vmnet3 bond0
  Bridge to the primary host network interface (which can change over time).
  #"$LIBDIR/vmnet-bridge" -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-vmnet0.pid vmnet0 ''
  
  Edit the vmx file for your virtual machine and change 
  
  ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"
  ethernet0.vnet = "/dev/vmnet0"
  
  to
  
  ethernet0.connectionType = "custom"
  ethernet0.vnet = "/dev/vmnet0"
  
  make sure fusion isnt running and restart it with
  
  sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/boot.sh --restart 
  
  Im not certain what speed im getting on the link in the VM, as task manager states it running at 10mb/s as does the driver. But I have network connectivity, which is all I wanted.
  

  Chealion : It did fix the /dev/vmnet0 issue but I get no throughput. The Tokamak scripts allowed me to make a separate vmnet to attempt the bridge with but it failed to connect as well. 2.0.6b1 was just released so I am going to attempt to use that to see if it affects anything (but from the release notes it doesn't say so).

  Josh : Rats I was hoping one of those would work for you. I'll see if I can find anything else out.

  Chealion : Thanks for trying - it was promising. I'm not sure if it is partly a 10.4 issue that traffic is dropped as I can get the MAC address to show up in the arp table by attempting to ping but no traffic actually goes in *or* out.

  Chealion : 2.0.6b1 didn't help either - there is no traffic going in or out.
  From Josh

• Despite the excellent suggestions by Josh, VMWare Fusion 2.x simply just would not bridge correctly.

  This has been fixed in Version 3.x released today (October 27th, 2009)

  From Chealion