trouble seeing abyss server on xp guest from win95 guest

[bobl]

I've NEVER done any networking before but want to set up a test network to help me learn ISAPI.
For a while now I've been running xp under virtualbox hosted on win7 64 and have always been able to access external websites via NAT.
I've added a win95 vm and am trying to get them to "talk"
My win95 had no IE or tcp/ip so I installed these...again...to the extent that I can access external websites via NAT.
When setting up win95...I gave it the SAME WORKGROUP NAME and IP ADDRESS as XP 'cos ipconfig didn't work on win95 (just found out it's winipcfg).
With this setup I tried file sharing and it worked. Not sure what I did.

What I really want to do is set up Abyss on xp and access it from IE2 on win95.
I set up Abyss on xp under NAT.
If I type ...localhost...up comes my html page in htdocs.

I've tried numerous things to see this page from win95 but nada.

I could do with a real plain english explanation of what needs to happen.

BTW I'm not interested in roping the host into this network (yet!) unless it's essential.

I'm running 4.1.4 and note the new gui for the network icon (bottom right of the screen) has port forwarding.
It shows host and guest ip addreses.
I'm confused as to what these ACTUALLY mean.
I've got a win7 as a host, xp as a guest with Abyss on and win95 as guest which is a client of xp's server.
Do I really have to specify win7's ip address here?

Also
I'm interested in doing this via NAT for realism but am also interested in internal networking.

Thank you in anticipation and if any virtualbox developers are looking in Thank you for an awesome piece of software.

[Perryg]

Two guests set to use NAT will not see each other. You need to use Bridged or Host-only and if the Internet is required in the guest running Host-only you will need to add a second adapter set to NAT.

See Chapter 6 in your VirtualBox users guide.

[bobl]

Hey Perryg
Great responsiveness and thanks for the advice!

[bobl]

That setup works great (with Bridged)
but I get "no Host-only network adapter is selected" when I try to select Host-only for adapter 1 on Xp (vm running Abyss).
Has anyone any idea why this might be?
Thanks in anticipation.

[BillG]

That usually only happens if you did not install the host-only adapter when you installed VirtualBox. Did you choose not to install it? It installs by default.

[bobl]

I have no recollection of the install
I didn't want anything to do with the host before the above advice so it is quite likely I'd have said no.
I just got a message today saying there's a new vbox update so I'll install that.
Thanks very much for your help!

[bobl]

Hmmm...When I restarted virtualbox it didn't come up with the message (I thought I saw) about a new version available.
I tried to re-install the old version but it only gives two options...repair and remove.
repair didn't say anything about host-only so I'd like to try remove and then re-install.

Problem is...
I'm not sure what I need to back-up to save the three virtual machines I'm using.
There's a folder called C:\Users...........\VirtualBox VMs.

Do I just save that directory and then put it's contents into the new VirtualBox VMs after a new install???
Thank you in anticipation.

[Perryg]

Open the VirtualBox main manager. Click on file -> preferences.
Next click on network. Is there anything in there? Any information?
If not click the add icon and add a new instance of Host-only.
Configuration should be as follows.

host-only-1.png (25.24 KiB) Viewed 2068 times

host-only-2.png (28.41 KiB) Viewed 2068 times

[bobl]

There was nothing in that window and I did have to add it.
I've now got your settings exactly (I think) apart from the zero in the "IPv6 Network Mask Length"
i.e. my field's blank.

I replaced ONLY xp's bridged adapter for the host-only adapter but on the client browser I now get
"found website/waiting" but nothing's coming up.
By contrast if I swap back to the bridged adapter on xp, win95's browser finds the site immediately.

At least I can now select a Host-only adapter so progress is being made.
Thank you for the advice.

[mpack]

I replaced ONLY xp's bridged adapter for the host-only adapter but on the client browser I now get
"found website/waiting" but nothing's coming up. By contrast if I swap back to the bridged adapter on xp, win95's browser finds the site immediately.

I assume you realise that both guests would have to be using host only mode, otherwise they are on different networks.

[bobl]

Sorry for not responding earlier...I thought this thread had ended so good job I checked.
I'm afraid you assumption does me undue credit i.e. I didn't know or do that but thanks very much for putting me straight.
That's great.