virtualbox.org

My machine runs strictly offline, has no network connection, and I cannot get shared folders to be set up, even after several days of tinkering, and trying all 3 methods described in the UG. The VBoxManage is not recognized by the command prompt - why not? I have 3 different kinds (vintages) of command prompt on my XP guest, and none of them accepts VBoxManage as a command. And 'net use' doesn't work either. Is it illegitimate to work a computer without the Internet? When I follow the method starting with My Network Places, I don't even get Entire Network, just nothing there. I do sometimes see Entire Network, with other stuff under it, not anything about shared folders, and that is when I run OpenStat, the only application program I have on the guest so far. Does anyone more used to networks see any sense there? (I surmise that the shared folders feature may somehow be modeled on network conventions, and then not get started if there is no real network business there in the first place.)

The reason the VboxManage is not working for you is because you have not set the path statement in Vista. Unless you have this setup you must be in the directory that VBoxManage is in (This is an operating system issue). This is done by right clicking my computer and going to properties. The other part you mention is not being able to get share working without the network. This to is achievable by use of the loopback network that is in every copy of windows since Windows 3.11. Do some research and you will find out how to do this.

You can find out how to do all of these things by typing "set path in vista" and "Install loopback in Windows" in Google.

Thanks to perryg for getting me started on research. I now have the VBoxManage and net commands being answered (one way or another), and I did get MS LoopBack installed on host and guest, and can do the things suggested in the UG by command line or by GUI - but have still no shared folders working.
I understand now that one doesn't have to have other communications going to make VirtualBox Guest Additions work through LoopBack. But the VirtualBox documentation seems to assume that VirtualBox users are network techs fluent in computer networking (which is nowadays covered with 1 or more chapters in the better books about operating systems, I just noticed), and that they can fill in the many details apparently required to make the whole scheme work. Much of the documentation one finds about loopback is not specifically for installing it in a VirtualBox environment.
What puts “VirtualBox Shared Folders” into "My Network Places" under "Entire Network"?? I have a hunch that I am missing something in my procedure, and that faking it by putting in a node that I can name anything I want myself is not good enough, if it doesn't have the right stuff behind it. I did get the MS Loopback Adapter showing in Network Connections (under my guest's XP) at one time, but it assumed dial-up and had no number to call, so I uninstalled it. A Microsoft article (KB839013) gives a sample script for remote loopback installation, with apparently all the details it takes, but it talks about TCP-IP, without necessarily thinking about the kind of loopback installation that VirtualBox may exclusively depend on. What kind of wiring does VirtualBox assume to be simulated by the loopback? Or does that not matter, in intercepting an abstract bit stream?

(The p2p source is not very productive for me, by the way, because they are a guild-like insiders' organization giving full privileges only to sustained contributors.)

Roger,
It looks like you have really come a long way in making this happen. What you have that is failing could be something as simple as a driver that is missing or failed to install properly. VBox should have provided a host only adapter for use of communication between host and guest. For this to work you would need to set the network adapter in the VBox settings to host only. If this does not work you should try to reinstall VBox again and select repair. This will or should repair and replace damaged or missing drivers that you need. Then you should be able to see the host from the guest and shared folders should work as well.
To get the shared folder to work you set (in the guest settings) by clicking on the down arrow to the right of the share path field and browse to the folder that you want to share. Remember it must be a folder and not the entire drive, because it has to be an absolute. When selecting the share name in the VBox settings make it easy and do not use caps or characters just call it "share" in the folder name.
Then in the guest, the easiest way to map the drive is from the CMD prompt. Type the following:
Let me know if you need further assistance in this matter.

Perryg:
After some broader study of network terminology and account management policies available, in 3 detailed books on Windows XP, I tried your suggestion of a 'net use' command with a special switch, and it didn't work for me. But I do not understand to what extent I might have come close to your vision of using a product that we do not have. I don't understand to what extent I should be able to create my own communications technology on the fly to make the rather entrepreneurial VirtualBox product work for me. (At one time I got a message "Find and share music, pictures, and video on your network", as if to prove how professional Microsoft is when all "repair" procedures fail. The 'Attached to: Host-only Adapter' idea I tried some more, but only ended up with choosing 'Internal Network' instead of 'NAT', as network address translation without Internet access is I think the last thing I want to try.)

I made some puzzling partial progress though: On the guest running XP Pro, I now do have a shared folder appearing, not under My Computer, but under My Network Places. But it is not from the host machine, it is just from the guest, paradoxically, and clearly labelled so,

Name Comments Computer Network location
SharedMyDATA on VBox1 (guestname) \\guestname\SharedMyDATA This computer Local Network

This happened after some tinkering with Properties of the Local Area Connection 2 on the guest machine, especially the Microsoft Loopback Adapter configuration, namely setting Network Address to 127.0.0.1; the latter I cannot prove however, because when I try to pull it out again, messages tell me that "The value must not be blank", although it had been blank for many days before I started tinkering, and I never was sure if one legitimately talks about DNS addresses on an Ethernet LAN, the most plausible fiction, I assume, for my standalone computer situation. But at least something appeared under My Network Places, without needing a network. It seems to indicate that if I got the communications working, the rest would cooperate.

The questions I have left, even after lots of learning, are the following:
1.) Is it proper to use DNS addresses on a standalone computer, within the fictitious world of a Microsoft Loopback Adapter?
2.) If so, what do I have left, to troubleshoot the lack of communication between host and guest? (I noticed that the Vista host's Local Area Connection 2 has sent many packets, but received none. At one time I also saw guest statistics showing many packets sent and none received.)
3.) Are the 'hosts' files provided by VirtualBox sharp enough as they come, or is there a point in tinkering with them? (I have done that somewhat, without success, because I noticed baf's advice under "Virtual XP very very slow if using shared folders on Mac".)
4.) What is 'vboxsvr' really, in terms of syntax and semantics? Is it a 'placeholder' for something the user has to fill in, like the real name of the server computer, i.e. the host? Or is it a 'literal', that has to be copied literally, no matter what the case?


(Encouraged by my partial success, I went over the corresponding Local Area Connection 2 entry among the Connections of the Vista host, and put in a corresponding Network Address 127.0.0.1, matching the System32\drivers\etc\hosts file contents on both sides, but it changed nothing on the guest computer. I then tried to pull out this address on the host, as it seems to make no difference, and the host doesn't let me. I have loopback adapters at both ends on 10.0 Mbps Ethernet now.)

(Incidentally, there was half of a justification for the guest sharing its own files with itself: I had experimented with making a guest folder shared, to see if that could be used to restrict access across accounts on the same machine.)

OK so here is the part of the VBox Users guide that you need to read. For more information click on help and then contents. It is all there.

6.7. Host-only networking
Host-only networking is another networking mode that was added with version 2.2 of VirtualBox. It can be thought of as a hybrid between the bridged and internal networking modes: like with bridged networking, the virtual machines can talk to each other and the host as if they were connected through a physical ethernet switch. Like with internal networking however, a physical networking interface need not be present, and the virtual machines cannot talk to the world outside the host since they are not connected to a physical networking interface.

Instead, when host-only networking is used, VirtualBox creates a new software interface on the host which then appears next to your existing network interfaces. In other words, whereas with bridged networking an existing physical interface is used to attach virtual machines to, with host-only networking a new "loopback" interface is created on the host. And whereas with internal networking, the traffic between the virtual machines cannot be seen, the traffic on the "loopback" interface on the host can be intercepted.

Host-only networking is particularly useful for preconfigured virtual appliances, where multiple virtual machines are shipped together and designed to cooperate. For example, one virtual machine may contain a web server and a second one a database, and since they are intended to talk to each other, the appliance can instruct VirtualBox to set up a host-only network for the two. A second (bridged) network would then connect the web server to the outside world to serve data to, but the outside world cannot connect to the database.

To change a virtual machine's virtual network interface to "host only" mode:

either go to the "Network" page in the virtual machine's settings notebook in the graphical user interface and select "Host-only networking", or

on the command line, type VBoxManage modifyvm <VM name> --nic<x> hostonly; see Section 8.5, “VBoxManage modifyvm” for details.

For host-only networking, like with internal networking, you may find the DHCP server useful that is built into VirtualBox. This can be enabled to then manage the IP addresses in the host-only network since otherwise you would need to configure all IP addresses statically.

In the VirtualBox graphical user interface, you can configure all these items in the global settings via "File" -> "Settings" -> "Network", which lists all host-only networks which are presently in use. Click on the network name and then on the "Edit" button to the right, and you can modfy the adapter and DHCP settings.

Alternatively, you can use VBoxManage dhcpserver on the command line; please see Section 8.25, “VBoxManage dhcpserver” for details.

Perryg: Thanks for all that scholarship. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me immediately either, because the first step knocks out my virtual machine, on which I have my activated Windows XP Pro SP3. It took tender care to salvage that precious activation, fortunately only setting 'Host-only Adapter' back to 'Internal Network', which leaves me short of shared folders again. I did have to do a precautionary system restore after getting sucked by pure curiosity into the Network Setup Wizard of XP, which assumes willing customers who do not miss a Cancel option all the way through.
On second thought, I went an extra mile on the theory, that your suggestions may work once all of them are followed through, even if that means fighting through a jungle of unfamiliar technicalities. I discovered that I have an enabled DHCP server, and may have had it long ago. But I got discouraged by not seeing a plausible path towards creating a virtual network. VBoxManage does not seem to have a command for creating a network, although it has a command for creating a virtual machine and another for registering a virtual machine, in both cases with a settings file, whose content and syntax I do not see documented. The XML machine description has a Network paragraph and a field for 'InternalNetwork name' if applicable, but this is more like a network type, and there might be several networks of the same type.
The reason why the User Manual doesn't help I gather is that it is about an entrepreneurial, provisional product which leaves users to struggle to coordinate numerous parameters that make sense only to career technicians. I think what is needed, in the absence of built-in, ready-made shared folders, is at least a Real/Virtual Network Configuration Wizard, that may be pardoned for a few odd cases in which it drops the user, but will at least in most cases provide the coordination that casual consumers do not have time and gusto to acquire.
I have set myself a deadline on June 1, by which I will pass on to work on alternative arrangements. All I need is a virtual XP machine for a few weeks at most, in which I can slipstream an XP install disk with SATA drivers, so I can use it to provide the reliable and legacy-compatible leg of a dual-boot installation on my notebook with pre-installed Vista. I intend to use no virtual machines as soon as this is accomplished. (And I might find someone whose real XP machine I can use temporarily, instead of enduring all this virtual aggravation.)