How to connect OpenWRT UTM VM to Windows 11 VM (Apple Silicon)

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Hello,

I'm new to setting up OpenWRT. I am trying to set this up on my 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Max processor. I've followed the official OpenWRT guide for setting up a UTM virtual machine running OpenWRT. I have added an OpenVPN connection to the "router" and I have successfully connected to it within the OpenWRT VM. I followed this YouTube guide as the official guide (which had me change Firewall settings) broke the installation and stayed offline, even after removing every VPN-related thing. So I redid everything from scratch. I also have installed Windows 11 on a UTM virtual machine.

My goal is for the Windows VM to only connect to the network through my OpenWRT VM, essentially ensuring the VM only ever connects to the Internet through my VPN and otherwise has no network connection to the host. There's just one problem: Nothing I try seems to work. Either the Windows 11 VM stays offline at best or somehow breaks the networking set up by my router at worst. I also am not sure if this is strictly an OpenWRT issue or a UTM issue. Perhaps it's both? Either way, I can't seem to find anything online showing me how to connect the OpenWRT UTM installation to another UTM virtual machine, but I'd have to imagine it's possible. Otherwise, what would be the point in setting up a guide on installing OpenWRT to a UTM virtual machine if nothing can use it?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

2

Update: I managed to get the Windows 11 VM connected to the OpenWRT VM. HOWEVER, I still am not connected to the Internet in Windows 11.

As far as how I managed to get the VMs connected, here's what I did: In the settings of the OpenWRT VM, I added the following line as a custom option in UTM:
-device virtio-net-pci,mac=random-mac-address-here,netdev=net2 -netdev socket,id=mynet0,listen=:1234

And add a similar line to the Windows 11 VM:
-device virtio-net-pci,mac=random-mac-address-here,netdev=net2 -netdev socket,id=mynet0,connect=:1234

Note that the MAC Addresses should be different between OpenWRT and Windows 11. Booting up the OpenWRT VM and logging in to LuCi, I added the new Ethernet interface to the LAN zone, using similar settings to br-lan as far as static IP and setting up a DHCP server. The static IP is different, of course. I used 10.0.2.15, but it shouldn't really matter.

I then booted up the Windows 11 VM. I can see in LuCi that my Windows 11 VM is listed as having a DHCP lease. But as I said, I'm still not connected to the Internet in Windows 11. Any help with that would really be appreciated. Thanks!