virtualbox.org

Hi, I have, what I think is, a somewhat weird networking issue. I have a virtual WinXP SP2 on a Ubuntu Feisty system. VB is 2.1. Network is via eth0. I can load WinXP with NAT and everything seems fine. But I want to run a Window's based server, so I'm trying to get the host interface running.

It does, in fact, run, but I can't get the VM to talk to the host machine via the network. The host machine is my DHCP server, and the WinXP gets a valid IP/DNS/domain/etc. I can also ping the WinXP VM from anywhere on my network, including the host. I can ping all of my devices on the network, including the host, from WinXP, however, I have to use the numerical IP, not the hostname. Initially I couldn't connect to the internet, but the problem was that it could not talk to the DNS server, which is also the host machine. I specified one of my ISP's DNS servers via the Windows connection manager and can now connect to the internet.

If I try and SSH to the host it also doesn't work.

I will admit I don't totally understand the host interface, but it appears to function just like any other device on the network. Is this because I'm trying to talk to the same machine via its own network card? Am I trying to do something dumb? Are you only supposed to use shared folders to access the host when using host interface?

Does anyone have an answer of as to what or why this is?

Since you changed to the DNS servers of your provider, you, of course, cannot access any machine by name if they aren't Windows.

As for the connection if you did use the DNS of your Host, are the computers on your network actually registered with that DNS? Is it configured correctly?

Yes, since I'm using my ISP's DNS server, I can't connect to any of the devices on my network via their hostname. Hence, I'm using just their numerical IP, but even this isn't good enough for the host machine.

As far as the local DNS server, it works for all other machines. I have a host, two laptops, a Wii, and a Slimbox, all of which talk via their hostnames. I can even talk to the WinXP VM via it's hostname from, say, one of the laptops as the VM registered with the DNS server. I can also see the VM register in /var/sys/syslog. The DHCP server doles out the host's IP for the DNS server, which is correctly found by the WinXP VM. I would say the DNS is configured correctly to give out the right hostnames as well as point to a public DNS for internet traffic.

Ping and DHCP are the only two things I've found that network well between the VM and host.