VMWare/VirtualBox: Not able to ping Host-Only network adapter from windows host to linux guest

Question

Scenario:

• Windows host running XP SP3
• (Virtual) Ubuntu Server 10.04 (fresh install, only selected "LAMP Package" option during installation.
• Tested on VMWare Player / VirtualBox

I can ping by ip from one box to the other with no problem. When i try to ping by host name (in linux or windows), i get a message telling me that the host could not be found.

I've been reading the docs and searched throught the forums of VMWare and VBox, but as this is my first attempt to run a linux box i feel i'm missing some configuration or package installation to make this work.

Note: i need the linux box to use a host-only adapter because we`re setting up a virtual machine for development and the LAMP stack in it must be local for the workstations that will use it. We don't want to user bridged adapters because if we do, we'll need to set up a different name for each VM copy to be used.

Solution 1

Since each Ubuntu VM will appear only on a workstation's host-only network, the VM can be given a static hostname and IP address. Put that hostname/address mapping into your LAN's local DNS server, and that will allow each XP workstation to ping its Ubuntu VM by name.

Conversely, in order for the VM to ping the workstation by name, you need some way of communicating the workstation name/IP mapping to the VM. The name used for the workstation need not be the same as its name on the LAN, so the simplest option is to give the workstation a static name/address on the host-only network, and put this mapping into the VM's /etc/hosts file.

With these configurations, you should be able to copy the VM to each workstation, configure the host-only network in VirtualBox, and go.

Solution 2

My scenario is a Linux Guest VM using Arch Linux running on a 64-bit Windows 7 hostmachine.

The network is configured as NAT in VMWARE, and pinging the Guests IP-address works. But it does not respond if i ping the hostname of the guest.

The only way to reliably make that work is to install Samba on the Guest.

Solution 3

Try adding entries to the two hosts files on the windows box and Linux box?

Comments

[user57570]

I'd like this to be as seamless as possible, because we'll be copying this VM to many workstations. If we can avoid that "extra setup" in each workstation, better. Thanks for your response!

[RateControl]

Ah, at least you can throw them in the hosts files as a troubleshooting measure. If it works, you can post another question as on how to skip that extra step :)

[user57570]

Thoreau, do you know what packages are needed in order to communicate between windows and linux boxes? Im confused about Samba and WinBind. Thankx!

[RateControl]

If you just want to do simple file share, I am sure that Ubuntu has a built in folder-sharing (using nfs). I have used it before with Fedora. If you want something more robust, I'd do an apt-get install (is that correct?, again Fedora/Red hat guy) of samba. Then you would just have to configure the samba.conf file