virtualbox.org

I have a host machine running Windows 7 with an proxy configured on localhost for making internet connections over the LAN. I run the host's browser through the proxy for example. I would like to make use of this proxy also with the virtual machines running on this host (both Windows and Linux guests). With VirtualBox Manager running on the host, in File > Preferences > Proxy, I put the IP address and port of this proxy on the hosts.

I thought this would be sufficient to accomplish the proxy connection whenever I run a browser on the guest, but apparently I am missing another step because it fails to connect. Would I need to make a proxy configuration setting in the guest as well, either on a system level or in its browser? Does the network setting need to be bridge or NAT in particular?

I have not found a thorough explanation of this procedure in any of the documentation. If such exists, can someone give me a link? Thanks.

For the guest to behave like the host, you do indeed need to use bridged networking, no NAT. The guest will then use the network in the same way as the other LAN machines and be able to use the proxy. Proxy and NAT are not compatible with each other, since they are different ways of doing much the same thing.

No, that is not true. If your host machine uses a proxy and you set your virtual machine to run on a bridged mode then your VM will not use the network the same way as your host machine does. This is what official documentation says



Begueradj

While BillG's words can be obscure to people not used with networking, what he meant was:

Bridged mode will make the guest appear and behave the same way as the host from a LAN point of view - distinct entities directly available.
And so the guest and the host still need to be configured the same way