I produce some scientific software that I release to other labs as an Ubuntu Server (16.04) VirtualBox VM . The VM includes a webservice so needs to be accessible from other machines on their networks, I therefore set the VM up with bridged networking.
The VM works fine on my work network, on my home network, and many other users have no problem running it on their networks. A few users, however, have reported problems with it not getting a network connection. On booting it hangs for 5 mins waiting for an IP address then eventual continues the boot without a network.
On the face of it it would seem that these failures are just the result of some local networking policy (e.g. requirement for MAC address to be registered) but this doesn't seem to be the case. For one user who was stuck with this problem, I used a remote desktop session to create a fresh VM with a standard Ubuntu ISO on their computer. I installed my software and everything worked fine. Basically I did exactly what I'd done on my own computer when I originally produce the VM for distribution, but this time directly on their computer. Installing from scratch worked fine, but running what should be basically an identical VM created on my computer and then imported on to their computer failed.
Something I'm doing, either in the configuration of the VM, or during my software installation procedure is screwing things up. Is there something I can do to 'flush' all networking configuration on the VM before I package it up into an OVA, then have Ubuntu configure the networking just as if it's a fresh install when they restore the OVA on their computer?
I'm happy to post logs etc if it will help diagnose the issue(s).
