Why can't I ssh into (or even ping) my Ubuntu VM from the Mac OS X host?

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 as a virtual machine using VMware Fusion 3.0 on Mac OS X 10.5.8. I want to be able to ssh into my VM from the Mac OS X host (so I can use MacFUSE and SSHFS to mount the VM's files on the Mac).

I had this working previously, but then I:

• upgraded Fusion from 2.x to 3.0


• rolled the VM back to a previous snapshot


• upgraded the VMware Tools in the VM

I re-installed ssh in the VM using sudo apt-get install ssh.

I then tried ssh 172.16.193.129 from my Mac, and after some time it timed out. So I tried pinging the VM from my Mac, and 0 packets were received. (I can ping the Mac from the VM with no problem.)

Any advice on how to troubleshoot this?

Update: I tried switching from NAT to Bridged (as suggested by Stephen Thompson) and got strange "Time to live exceeded" messages when I tried to ping the VM. I realized that was due to the VPN I'm using. I disconnected from the VPN and can now ping the VPN and ssh into it, regardless of whether I use NAT or Bridged.

Answer

Try setting your network to bridged, so it picks up a network address from your lan, and you will be able to gain access to it.