virtualbox.org

I am a newly convert to VBox and must say that so far I find the program absolutely stunning, kudos to the developers!

I have read through the user manual, and a good deal of this forum, but cannot seem to get a definitive handle on what would be the better solution for me.
Any advise would be appreciated (before I mess things up too much)!

I am running XP (guest) as a WM under Fedora (host).
I use the IIS (MS Internet Information Service) web server in the guest OS.

I have all my web files under the Linux host OS, and want to use IIS inside the guest to serve them. This way, I can edit my files in Linux, using my prefered editor, serve them with IIS, showing them in a browser on either OSes (I am not to fussed on that point for now).

Problem arises when I try to get IIS in the guest to serve files from a partition (NTFS via ntfs-3g) on the host. So far I have considered:

1. Using a VBox shared folder.
Problem: I cannot assign a shared folder as the IIS root web folder to serve files from (network not available in the dialog, thus cannot get to VBox shares).

2. Assign the assigned VBox share as a Shared Network folder.
Problem: Although IIS let me browse to this location, I cannot choose it (OK buttom in dialog is grey'd out - can this be a permissions thing?).

3. Copying the relevant web files to within the guest OS.
Problem: Cannot edit them from the Linux host. Also, I would prefer to keep them on the host in general (for security and backup).

4. I am reading RAW HDDs, and considering making the NTFS partition (with the web files) a RAW HDD in VBox.
Problem: As I understand it, access to a RAW partition cannot be concurrent between the guest and host OS, thus making files iether servable by IIS in guest, or editable under host, but not both at the same time.

If any of my asumptions above are wrong, please feel free to set me right;
or, if someone feels that there is a better way of acheiving this, please let me know.

(Reason for all this is that I am working on an ASP/VB projekc, but would like to use my preferred Linux editor, and getting away from dual boot would be brilliant).

Cheers!
CJ

Apologies for bumping my own thread, but it has been a while with no answers and I will risk the wrath as I am still having this issue (and any potential wrath cannot be worse than the daily annoyance of having to dual-boot into Windows).

Isn't there anyone out there using VirtualBox for developing ASP/VB pages for IIS that can give me a workable setup?

Cheers again.

Did u considered to run a SUBST command in the guest OS (windows) ?

Maybe via subst you can map "as local" a shared folder, so IIS will let u to select it!

It's only a suggestion but never experienced about it.

kartone wrote:Did u considered to run a SUBST command in the guest OS (windows) ?

Having tried with the newer version of SUBST (as per my point two above), I never thought of trying the older version, though let's see...

I am having some trouble with my Linux installation and am in the process of re-installing, and will try it out when I get over that hurdle. I wanted to thank you for replying, though, much appreciated.

Cheers!

Ok, have had the possibility to try it out, and it actually works part of the way - but only part, sadly.

I can map it, and even get IIS to accept it as a root directory, but then the fun stops, as I get a 404 on it when trying to serve it up in a browser.

Good try on the SUBST, it nearly worked, but alas, I shall need something else, some other way.... anybody, everybody? I am fed up with having to boot into XP when I need to work, so any suggestion would be welcome, really...!

Cheers
CJ