virtualbox.org

Hi,
this is my first time here so please help me out..I am running virtualbox 2.2.4. I have installed two Computers one running server 2008 and the other running xp 2p2. I am trying to network these two PCs Virtualy but I am not able to do so. Kindly guide me step by step on how to do this. Thanks

Read the Manual and the FAQ's about Host-only and Bridge networking.

vbox4me2 wrote:Read the Manual and the FAQ's about Host-only and Bridge networking.

I have set up the bridge network but when I ping the two computers I still get the time out message.. please give me a step by step process on how to set up and test the connection

Check IP settings, firewalls. As I've said before: we sell swimming pools but we don't teach you how to swim.

vbox4me2 wrote:Read the Manual and the FAQ's about Host-only and Bridge networking.

Done that. No wiser. Connection still falls over.

My understanding of network bridging is that two interfaces are 'merged' into one, with one IP and same MAC address. This doesn't happen with 'bridging' under VBOX 3.0.0. If I follow the manual I end up with an 'eth0' on my host OS 'bridged' to 'ether 1' on my guest OS, but each still has its own MAC address and neither has an IP. And the manual says nothing about how one allocates an IP to this 'bridged' interface let alone how ARP can work with two MACs.

So for us thickoes who are unable to divine what the authors of the manual and FAQ intended to say, or thought we would be able to comprehend by reading between the lines, or should have absorbed with our mother's milk, could some expert out there take pity and elucidate on the finer points of network bridging under VirtualBox.

In bridge mode any VM acts like a seperate machine with its own MAC and IP address. If a VM does not get/have an IP address you either set it static or sort out your dhcp router as thats the one handing out dynamic addresses. There are issues with 3.0 at the moment but I expect an update release soon to fix this, in the mean time you can always drop down a version.

vbox4me2 wrote:In bridge mode any VM acts like a seperate machine with its own MAC and IP address

I'm sorry, but that makes no sense. In bridge mode you don't want it to act as a separate machine with its own MAC and IP - that's what it's doing in NAT mode, Internal mode and Host-Only mode.

When I bridge (say) ether0 on the guest to eth0 on the host I expect to have one IP address which takes me right through the host into the guest - ie I set the IP address on the ether0 of the guest which is the one the world sees. If I have a DSL client on my guest I should be able to set the guest's ethernet (adapter 1 in VB speak) to the public IP given to me by the ISP and browse away or download to the guest quite happily, without exposing a single bar of the host to access from outside.

The only way this can work is if when linking a VM network adapter to a physical adapter by bridging a bridge port is established with one MAC and one IP address, to which the physical network card and the virtual network adapter are bound. VirtualBox isn't even close to doing this, in 3.0.0 anyway. I haven't yet experimented with manually hacking the MAC addresses to see if I can marry the two that way.

If you're anticipated future release solves this problem I shall be delighted, but dropping to an earlier version - with all that involves - leaves much to be desired as a solution.

tombrdfrd66 wrote:I'm sorry, but that makes no sense. In bridge mode you don't want it to act as a separate machine with its own MAC and IP - that's what it's doing in NAT mode, Internal mode and Host-Only mode.

Sorry mate but that is what bridge mode does, whether you want this or not that is how it behaves.

vbox4me2 wrote:Sorry mate but that is what bridge mode does, whether you want this or not that is how it behaves

Sorry, friend, but in VBox 3.0.0 anyway that's just how it isn't behaving.

Perhaps we are at cross purposes. With a NATted ethernet adapter (the VBox default) every packet received by the physical ethernet interface goes to the HOST OS which decides what to do with it according to the port it is directed to. If port-forwarding is set up the HOST will pass it on to the GUEST OS to deal with.

With a bridged ethernet adapter every packet received by the physical ethernet interface should go directly to the GUEST OS to deal with.

When you want to run a network router as guest OS (as I do) it needs to be able to receive packets addressed to it on any port.

My understanding of the manual is that this is the purpose of bridging. When in VBoxManager I link a Guest ethernet adapter to an ethernet interface run by the Host that interface should be taken over by the Guest in some form. The manual says something about VBox putting a driver on the Guest to effect this but in my set up at least that isn't happening.

So is this a bug in v3.0.0 which your promised update will deal with, or does VBox mean by bridging something different to the rest of the networking community?

Yes and no, Bridge seperates the VM as an individual machine, ports/protocols and all. However, VBox does need to do 'something' at NIC level to make this seperation possible, as its all going thru the same hardware NIC, exactly what happens is something you need to investigate via the OSE sources. If things ain't working in bridge mode it can very well be that some VBox component isn't installed properly(see also the 3.0.2 release), things like this need to be excluded first before going into whats happening inside the bridge.

vbox4me2 wrote:Check IP settings, firewalls. As I've said before: we sell swimming pools but we don't teach you how to swim.

May I nominate this for the most unhelpful answer yet seen on a forum?

Yes you may it won't change anything though, you buy a car from us and expect to get a drivers license with it, it doesn't work that way.