I'm running a Debian 13 (Trixie) virtual machine on VMWare and I'm encountering a frustrating networking issue. The VM boots up fine, and I can SSH into it from my desktop using Putty. However, after a few minutes, the connection drops with the error "Network Error: Software caused connection abort." Once it drops, I can't reconnect unless I toggle the network connection using the GUI settings in the remote console. During these disconnections, I can still ping external servers from the remote console, so it seems not entirely related to an internet connection failure. I've even tried reinstalling the virtual NIC, but that didn't solve the problem. I'm starting to think it might not be due to the network card going to sleep, but I'm open to any suggestions on things I might have overlooked. Any advice would be appreciated!
2 Answers
Don't get too caught up in the sleep theory. The connectivity drop could have multiple causes. What type of virtual network is your VM using? Is it NAT, bridged, or another configuration? Multiple virtual networks could also be affecting connectivity.
Firstly, check if your VM is connecting through DHCP. If it is, there could be issues with the DHCP lease timing out, so it could be worth investigating that.
It's actually assigned statically in the VM. I should've mentioned that!
It's using a standard VMware virtual NIC and connected to the same vSwitch as my other VMs, which are all working fine. I’m using the VMXNET3 driver, and the latest VMware tools are installed. This issue started after I upgraded to Linux v13 from v11.