Accessing a virtual server

[iamthez]

Hello everyone. I'm new here, and I have a rather complicated (for me) question.

As a web designer who likes to use multiple OSs, I'd like to be able to have a development environment that doesn't change. Since cross-platform portable web servers are in short supply, I'd like to be able to set up a minimal Linux-based OS (Puppy? Ubuntu Alternate?) with a web server (probably XAMPP) on a virtual machine.

The idea is that I would then be able to develop a website on Ubuntu/Elementary or whatever distro I happen to be playing with, and then switch to Windows to test in IE, etc. Installing the distro and configuring the web server is stuff i know how to do. My problem is access.

I would like to be able to do the following things on both Ubuntu and Windows:

• Access my development files on the guest OS with my text editors (Gedit/Sublime Text on the host).

• Access the web server via browsers on the host OS.

If your answer at any point involves SSH, please explain how to use it in terms so easy to understand that even a GUI junkie like me can comprehend. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

[BillG]

The "best" solution depends on how the Windows 7 machine is set up. If it is a standalone system you would use the host only option. This allows the vm to connect to the host through its host only interface. They will behave like two machines connected to the same hub/switch.

If your host machine is on a network with a DHCP server, I would use bridged networking, so that the vm looks like another machine on the network.

If you are accessing the web site it will just work like any other web site on the network. HTTP is OS independent. To see files from the Linux mchine in Windows you need Samba but that really has nothing to do with VirtualBox. It is just the difference between Windows and Linux.

[iamthez]

It's just a regular computer, connected to a DSL modem. No DHCP server that I know about. So how do I pull off that first option in Windows and Ubuntu?

[mschwartz]

See the link in my signature.

[iamthez]

See the link in my signature.

Nice. Thanks.