Networking gotcha when copying VMs installed from the ISO image

If you install an appliance to a virtual machine from the ISO image, you may come across an issue when copying or moving an installed appliance in which the name of the network adapter changes (e.g., from eth0 to eth1).

This issue is triggered when the virtual network adapter's MAC address changes because a configuration script in Ubuntu associates the name of the network adapter with its MAC address.

In the VM builds this script has been disabled:

# disable udev persistent net generation (11.1 ~ lucid)
echo -n > /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
echo -n > /lib/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules

# disable udev persistent net generation (2009.10-2 ~ hardy)
echo -n > /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
echo -n > /etc/udev/rules.d/75-persistent-net-generator.rules

If you are impacted by this issue (e.g., ISO image install) and do not wish to disable the Ubuntu script, you can either follow the steps described here, or simply reset the script's memory like this:

rm -f /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
reboot