As you may remember I started out using MacBook Air, but when I needed an ethernet port I decided to use my MacBook Pro. Now when I have everything setup and running on my MacBook Pro I will give the MacBook Air another chance. The first thing I had to do was buying a Thunderbolt to Gigabit ethernet adapter and connect it to the MacBook Air.





Setup a static IP address

Select System Preferences and then Network. Choose Manually configure IPv4 and fill in the IP address: 192.168.33.1





Find the port name

Open a terminal and type ifconfig.





The ethernet port's logical name is en6. There are only two things we have to change from the MacBook Pro setup:

• The TFTP server
• The DHCP server

The TFTP server

Select en6: 192.168.33.1 as the TFTP server host address.





The DHCP server

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" 
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>bootp_enabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>detect_other_dhcp_server</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>dhcp_enabled</key>
    <array>
        <string>en6</string>
    </array>
    <key>reply_threshold_seconds</key>
    <integer>0</integer>
    <key>Subnets</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>allocate</key>
            <true/>
            <key>lease_max</key>
            <integer>86400</integer>
            <key>lease_min</key>
            <integer>86400</integer>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>192.168.33</string>
            <key>net_address</key>
            <string>192.168.33.0</string>
            <key>net_mask</key>
            <string>255.255.255.0</string>
            <key>net_range</key>
            <array>
                <string>192.168.33.2</string>
                <string>192.168.33.254</string>
            </array>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

This file sets up the DHCP server to run on the interface named  en6, which is the Thunderbolt Gigabit ethernet port. It assumes that that port has been configured with the IP address 192.168.33.1, and dishes out addresses from 192.168.33.2 to 192.168.33.254

To start the server, run the following command:

->sudo /bin/launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/bootps.plist

Stopping the server is very similar:

->sudo /bin/launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/bootps.plist

System overview





The almost perfect workplace





The perfect workplace

If you happened to have an extra display laying around, you can hook it up and have the host on one display and the guest on the other display. Like this.





Unclutter my desk

My desk started to look a bit messy so I decided to buy a Belkin Thunderbolt dock. It has connections for:

• Three USB 3 ports
• Two Thunderbolt ports
• One Ethernet port

Exactly what I needed and yes it was almost "plug and play". I only had to change the ethernet port name from en5 to en7.

Thunderbolt dock setup





MacBook Air is ready for a ride

From now on I will use MacBook Air in my experiments.