Question

I'm sharing a couple of directories via samba from my linux machine, and have no problem seeing them from other windows XP boxes on the network.

Now I'm running Win7 as a virtual machine via VirtualBox, but I can't figure out how to connect to one of those shares. Is it possible? Is there a better way to get access to the file system on the host from a virtual machine?

Answer 1

Do you have the Windows 7 Guest additions installed? I would just start the VM and select form the VM Menu Bar, Devices -> Shared Folders - you use a simple dialog allowing you to select a path on your local machine. You can choose to make it permanent or read only.

Once you do that, you can map any of them from Windows Explorer. Select Tools -> Map Network Drive and select from the VirtualBox Shared Folders section.

This doesn't access the samba share directly, but it works. Not sure if you'll experience a performance problem with this approach.

Answer 2

By using NAT, Virtualbox is acting as a router, and the virtual machine is therefore hidden from the world outside its router - including your network.

Try setting the network to "bridged", in this way the virtual machine uses your physical router as its router and will appear as a normal machine on your network.