Vagrant not allowing NatNetwork on adapter 1 - vagrant

Question

Vagrant is forcing network type nat on adapter 1 (eth0) even when I have the network set as natnetwork in Virutalbox.
I can set up everything through Virtualbox manually and all my VMs can communicate with each other via eth0 as desired and port forwarding works as well. I would like to get Vagrant to work the same way for easy distribution among coworkers.
It looks like others have this problem and it's not being addressed by Vagrant:
https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/2779
Anyone know of a workaround?
Details:
$ VBoxManage list natnetworks
NetworkName: ff_mgmt
IP: 10.0.2.1
Network: 10.0.2.0/24
IPv6 Enabled: No
IPv6 Prefix: fd17:625c:f037:2::/64
DHCP Enabled: No
Enabled: Yes
Port-forwarding (ipv4)
https1:tcp:[]:4441:[10.0.2.11]:443
https2:tcp:[]:4442:[10.0.2.12]:443
https3:tcp:[]:4443:[10.0.2.13]:443
ssh1:tcp:[]:2221:[10.0.2.11]:22
ssh2:tcp:[]:2222:[10.0.2.12]:22
ssh3:tcp:[]:2223:[10.0.2.13]:22
loopback mappings (ipv4)
127.0.0.1=2
Relevant part of Vagrantfile:
boxes = [
{
:name => "ff1",
:ip => "10.0.2.11",
:ssh_port => "2221",
:https_port => "4441",
:mac => "0800270fa302",
:memory => "8192",
:cpus => "4"
},
{
:name => "ff2",
:ip => "10.0.2.12",
:ssh_port => "2222",
:https_port => "4442",
:mac => "0800270fb302",
:memory => "8192",
:cpus => "4"
},
{
:name => "ff3",
:ip => "10.0.2.13",
:ssh_port => "2223",
:https_port => "4443",
:mac => "0800270fc302",
:intnet2 => "seg5a",
:memory => "8192",
:cpus => "4"
}
]
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
boxes.each do |opts|
config.vm.define opts[:name] do |config|
config.vm.box = "ff"
#config.vm.box_version = 402
config.vm.hostname = opts[:name]
config.ssh.username = 'niska'
config.ssh.private_key_path = '/home/niska/.ssh/id_rsa'
config.vm.network :private_network, ip: opts[:ip]
config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 22, guest_ip: opts[:ip], host: opts[:ssh_port], id: 'ssh'
config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 443, host: opts[:https_port]
config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
vb.gui = false
vb.memory = opts[:memory]
vb.cpus = opts[:cpus]
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--nic1", "natnetwork"]
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--nictype1", "virtio"]
vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--macaddress1", opts[:mac]]
#vb.customize ["modifyvm", :id, "--intnet1", "ff_mgmt"]
end
end
end
Output of vagrant up. Notice override of natnetwork. Also port forwarding picks different ports and therefore fails to connect.
$ vagrant reload ff1
==> ff1: Attempting graceful shutdown of VM...
ff1: Guest communication could not be established! This is usually because
ff1: SSH is not running, the authentication information was changed,
ff1: or some other networking issue. Vagrant will force halt, if
ff1: capable.
==> ff1: Forcing shutdown of VM...
==> ff1: Clearing any previously set network interfaces...
==> ff1: Preparing network interfaces based on configuration...
->>> ff1: Adapter 1: nat <<<--- (overrode w/ 'nat')
ff1: Adapter 2: hostonly
==> ff1: Forwarding ports...
ff1: 22 (guest) => 2221 (host) (adapter 1)
ff1: 443 (guest) => 4441 (host) (adapter 1)
==> ff1: Running 'pre-boot' VM customizations...
==> ff1: Booting VM...
==> ff1: Waiting for machine to boot. This may take a few minutes...
ff1: SSH address: 127.0.0.1:22
ff1: SSH username: niska
ff1: SSH auth method: private key
ff1: Warning: Authentication failure. Retrying...
...
Vagrant never connects

Answer 1

Don't set nic1 (eth0) to anything other than NAT. virtualbox requires the first interface to be NAT.
ff1: Warning: Authentication failure. Retrying...
if you change the network type of the nic to natnetwork, then vagrant can't figure out how to ssh to the machine.
if you need vagrant at first to provision, change your network settings after you finish provisioning. however; after that point, you won't be able to use vagrant.