[CentOS] Slow CentOS VM when running off the network

Tue Jun 16 17:50:11 UTC 2009
Alfred von Campe <alfred at von-campe.com>

I have a CentOS 5.3 VM running under VMware on a WIndows XP laptop.   
Everything works fine when connected to the network.  However,  
removed from the network, most everything in the CentOS VM takes  
minutes to complete.  For instance, starting a new Terminal window  
takes over 3 minutes.  I did an strace, and there are a couple of  
long waits when trying to open a socket (/tmp/.ICE-unix/XXXXX for  
instance).

The host and the VM can ping each other fine, but any access to the  
VM (either external or from within) eventually succeeds, but it takes  
a long time.  First, I thought I'd reduce the default socket timeout  
(which I believe is set to around 90 seconds), but I can't find where  
to do that on a system wide level.  But I really need to figure out  
what is causing the problem in the first place.  I'm assuming the  
network is somehow misconfigured, but I don't know how.

Alfred