Virtual Machine - Network bridged mode with Linux Mint Host

Hi All,

Been having a problem that I can’t seem to figure out. I am trying to get a VM (in this case Windows server 2008 R2) to run on my linux mint desktop (Linux host) with a bridged network connection (so other computers on my network can interact with it.

The VM works when I have the network connection with NAT. But won’t work with bridged. Tried other VM’s, including Linux Mint/Ubuntu/Windows 10, same problem. I tried intially using Virtualbox, then VMWare Player no change. In despiration, I tried launching virtualbox with root (“sudo virtualbox” from terminal), that worked.

Now that I have evidence that I have a permission issue on my desktop in running it. How can I troubleshoot and fix? I would rather not leave virtualbox running as root.

Device info:
ryan@ryan-mint:~$ hostnamectl
Static hostname: ryan-mint
Icon name: computer-desktop
Chassis: desktop
Machine ID: b76cc7b1bbdc489e93909d2043031de8
Boot ID: 44769ab09f2c4251ac9f0ed818c9f58e
Operating System: Linux Mint 20.1
Kernel: Linux 5.4.0-81-generic
Architecture: x86-64
ryan@ryan-mint:~$ uname -a
Linux ryan-mint 5.4.0-81-generic #91-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jul 15 19:09:17 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
ryan@ryan-mint:~$ cat /etc/issue
Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa \n \l

?