Help your local newb set up a server in a server...

[chaos_zero]

Hello people. I am new to this but have been having fun setting it up so far. I have a powerful rackmount (8 cores 3.6 ghz, more then enough memory) running ubuntu server 11 64 bit. It does lots of other things unrelated. (LAMP, folding@home, rtorrent) I installed virtualbox and set up a winXP machine in headless mode with the great guide written here: >link to chapter 7 in guide forum wont let me post<

The current purpose of the windows xp machine is to run a Halo Custom edition dedicated server. So far i have tried plain NAT mode, NAT with tcp and udp portforwards to the port 2302 used for server. (my router/modem box also has this forwarded to the host server NIC) I could not get this to work so i tried bridged mode with the router/modem forwarded to either the host nic or the guest nic, still a failure. In all these instances i can see my server on the server list but i can not join it with the message "negotiating connection to server".

Is this a common problem and how can i fix it?

thank you very much for reading.

[Twisted Lucidity]

Before worrying about Halo, I think you need to make sure your basic networking is operational.

Does the WinXP have basic networking available?
Can you ping it (and can it ping other systems)?
And other basic checks.

I am clueless about networking, but if I can get VM hosted servers to work - it can't be that hard!
I normally find it's something stupid like a firewall config getting in the way.

[chaos_zero]

The windows XP vm has networking. Its DHCP assigned IP is not related at all to my network but if i am reading the guide right (please tell me if i am not) vbox's NAT and portforward make it work without actually being on your network in the regular sense. I assume that bridged mode allows it to actually function as a regular networked PC.

The windows VM can go online and ping other sites fine.
I can ping the server from anywhere on the internet. (it is a LAMP server too) but the ping command itself does not allow you to test specific ports.

For the halo port (2302) i have the router/modem forwarded to the ubuntu server, and Vbox forwwarding that same port to the winXP VM:

VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" --natpf1 "halo,tcp,,2302,,2302"
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" --natpf1 "haloudp,udp,,2302,,2302"

oh yeah and i turned the stupid windows firewall off too.

thanks again for responding.

[chaos_zero]

Also telnet >server ip< >2303< works, port is open, to the server itself at least.

[Twisted Lucidity]

I'm sorry, I've never used the port-forwarding features of VBox.
If the guest is bridged, I am not sure why you would need to forward anything (other than at the router for WAN access) - just access the guest directly.

[chaos_zero]

Hi, I have been using NAT mode. you can see the setps i have take with this: http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm?pag ... icID=40350

How should i set it up if i will use bridged mode?

thanks.

[BillG]

Set what up? If you use bridged mode, the host and guest operate on the network like two different machines. You access a website on one from the other just as you would access a website on one physical machine from a different machine on the network.