Trouble connecting to Novell IPX server on XPpro guest

mrsurething · Post by **mrsurething** » 28. Nov 2008, 05:02

Hoping someone has an idea here; Background-- at work we are running a Novell 4.2 server on IPX protocol. This requires the use of a Novell client (currently 4.9 spa5) to be installed on each station computer. I have a laptop that has XPpro on it and client 4.9 spa5 that connects to the server with no problems what so ever. This same computer dual boots to Vista Home Premium as well however Novell does not support clients prior to Novell Client 5.0 for Vista. At Novell 5, they have dropped support to the IPX protocol.

Ok, my issue: I want to boot in to Vista and run Virtualbox with XPpro as a guest (this is working fine so far). I've installed Novell Client 4.9spa5 on the XP guest and have the workgroup all identified correctly. I can see the other XP computers in the workgroup just fine however I can not connect to the Novell server. It never finds the tree. Does anyone have an idea as to how to make this work? (other than to upgrade the server to something this century)

Post by **Sasquatch** » 28. Nov 2008, 22:26

What network settings are you using on the VM? Did you attach the virtual NIC to NAT or did you create a Host Interface and bridge the connections? If you set NAT, then it's normal that you can't see the Novell server, as it uses IPX which isn't routed through NAT. NAT in VB will only translate TCP and UDP packets, nothing else. If you use Host Interface Networking, as described in the manual, you won't have this limitation.

mrsurething · Post by **mrsurething** » 29. Nov 2008, 00:34

Manual? What's that?.... No, I haven't even been there yet. Mater of fact, I just found the manual yesterday. Everything I've done so far has been just 'understood' from my part. It made sense. I'll check that and then report back. Thanks for the idea.