MySQL Replication: Slave cannot communicate with master (Got an error reading communication packets)

Question

I've got 2 Ubuntu 10.04 Server virtual machines running on VirtualBox with host-only network static IP address configuration.

Machine A: ubuntu-a 192.168.56.101

Machine B: ubuntu-b 192.168.56.102

Machines can ping each other via either hostnames or IP address.

MySQL 5.1 installed on both systems. I want to achieve replication with ubuntu-a as the master and ubuntu-b as the slave.

I have a database name project1 on ubuntu-a that I want to replicate.

I've set up a user on the master with this command:

mysql> grant replication client, replication slave on *.* to repl@'%' identified by '!!abc123';

my.cnf on ubuntu-a (master):

server-id = 1
log_bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log
binlog_do_db = project1

my.cnf on ubuntu-b (slave):

server-id = 2
master-host = 192.168.56.101
master-user = repl
master-password = !!abc123
master-connect-retry = 60
replicate-do-db = project1

However, when I try to import the data to the slave I get this error:

mysql> load data from master;
ERROR 1158 (08S01): Got an error reading communication packets

Any idea why this could be happening?