linux - Route request from 1VM to another

07
2014-07
  • Guest

    I have a linux ubuntu vm and windows xp vm running parallel.

    How would I go about routing a request from the xp vm to the linux vm?

    Host PC is setup to route test.com to 192.168.33.10 which is the ip of the VM I've tried modifying the host on the windows xp machine to route to host machine then through to linux but cant get it working.

    What ip would I need to target in windows xp host file?

    • Answers
  • gronostaj

    Your VMs probably aren't connected with each other. To verify that, try pinging one from another. If they won't recognize each other's IPs, then you have to setup a NAT network for them.

    1. Open VirtualBox Preferences.

      VirtualBox menu with Preferences highlighted

    2. Navigate to Network and click the Add NAT network button.

      Preferences window with Network section visible and Add NAT network button highlighted

    3. A new network will appear. Click OK.

    4. Open first VM's settings.

      VM context menu with Settings highlighted

    5. Navigate to Network section and change Attached to: to NAT network.

      VM network settings with NAT network selected

    6. Click OK. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for other VMs you want to connect into one network.

    Some settings may not be available when VMs are running. You may also have to reboot them or even restart VirtualBox to apply new settings.


    • Related Question

    linux - Can I virtualize my current XP installation within Ubuntu?
  • NoCatharsis

    Possible Duplicate:
    Converting existing PC into a VM with Virtual Box

    I have XP currently installed on my work machine, which is getting a bit outdated and sluggish. I was hoping to install Ubuntu 32-bit through Wubi and use VirtualBox to run XP.

    Would it be possible to mount my current XP installation?
    Would this even be advisable in order to speed up the XP applications I need to access?


    • Related Answers
  • Aaron Digulla

    Would it be possible to mount my current XP installation?

    Yes, there are several NTFS drivers available for Linux.

    While it is possible to use the NTFS partition as the boot partition for VirtualBox, it may not work because of different drivers.

    Would this even be advisable in order to speed up the XP applications I need to access?

    Even if it works, it won't make XP faster. The only way to speed up XP is to reinstall it. On the positive side, you can now make a backup of your XP boot disk and create an image from that on Linux. Try to install as many of your XP apps as possible and configure the system to your liking and create an image.

    Whenever something wrecks your XP install, you can reload the image in a few minutes without reinstalling everything.

  • Andrew Stern

    For installing WindowsXP inside of Ubuntu I would suggest using VirtualBox now owned by Oracle: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

  • user39559

    I second Aaron, it should be possible but it definitely will not speed things up.

    It will slow down... don't know how much, but it certainly will.

    The best solution from my experience:

    • I keep a clean, minimalist install of XP in its own partition.

      (Open control panel and uninstall Windows components: Certificates, IE, Outlook, Network, Media Player, Messenger, then install your hardware drivers, then your applications.)

    • I boot XP very seldomly, when I need to do something that is not available for Ubuntu.

      (Which means only unusual iPhone operations and TomTom GPS updating.)

    Whether you want to primarily use XP or not, anyway you should do the following:

    Create your partitions, including a small NTFS for XP installation and a big FAT or NTFS for the personal files you want to access from XP.

    The WindowsXP NTFS partition should have the smallest possible size that will make all the installation/configuration possible. (It should be just big enough so that XP installation accepts its size, and there is enough room for you to cut XP's fat and then install and run your applications.) I mean something between 4GB and 8GB, depending on how big your applications are.

    Keep your files in the other big partition so you can restore this image after XP gets too slow again without losing data.

    Creating / restoring the XP image

    After your XP is ready for the snapshot, boot your computer from Ubuntu LiveCD or from Ubuntu's own partition, so that the XP partition is not being used at all.

    Then carefully run a command like this:

    cd /path/to/imagefile/
df .
sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=FreshWindowsXP.img

    Make sure that

    • the XP partition really is /dev/sda1 or replace it by the correct partition.
    • /dev/sda1 it is not mounted (run mount to find out).
    • there is enough free space (the df . will tell you that).

    After some minutes it will finish and FreshWindowsXP.img will be a 4~8GB file with a perfect copy of the whole XP partition.

    When you want to restore this image, all you need to do is run the same commands with if and of switched.

    But be careful, dd is a powerful command and if you do it wrongly you may have serious data loss.

  • evnu

    If you put some work into it, you might try to migrate your existing Windows XP to be suitable for VirtualBox. For more information, see How to migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox. Note: I haven't tried that myself and I don't know if that procedure could hurt your installation. As mentioned in the Howto, backup your data! But as you'll be working with a dd'ed image, all should go well.

    If you are afraid of doing that, installing Windows in VirtualBox is done in no time.