Mapping a drive between WinXP host and VMware Linux guest?

[abidsultan]

Hi,

I am running VMware workstation 5.3, on a Win XP, and Linux as the guest OS. I want to map the drive of linux in windows. How can I do this?

Any guideline or the procedure, or anything else which I can do to accomplish this?

Thanks.

[Liz]

Shared folders a the simplest, however, you can map drives from windows to linux using samba.

Take a look at smbmount

[abidsultan]

Thanks Liz,

Can you paste me some link to get familiar with shared folder? I am a bit new to use VMware.

Or how to get started with Samba? I've googled the stuff but its bit confusing...can you suggest some way to do this.

Regards.

[Liz]

If you use the vmware shared folders the areas you share from your host will be under /mnt/hgfs/

smbmount has plenty of examples on how to use it, try "man smbmount"

but you can use things like

mount -t smbfs -o username=tridge,password=foobar //fjall/test /data/test

[abidsultan]

Liz, I tried "sharedfolders" under xp guest and thats good, it works. Now i want to use the same sharefolder setup under linux guest, so how can I do so...

Thank you for the help.

Regards.

[csmithtx]

enable the vm shared folders (edit vm settings / options / shared folders --- click the help button for more info on shared folders)

for a linux guest install the vmware guest tools ...

you can find the shared folder in /mnt/hgfs

[Liz]

Create them under the linux guest exactly the way you did for the windows guest, and as I previously mentioned they will appear under /mnt/hgfs on the linux guest - but only if you have the tools installed!

[abidsultan]

Hi,

I did the same, as you mentioned and Liz too, but the problem is how to get this share folder accessible under Linux guest, probably I am missing something in configuring network connection with Host....

[csmithtx]

perhaps it is the workstation 5.5.3 that doesn't behave like version 6? ... I missed this detail ... I based my answer on version 6 ... Liz's answer to use smbmount and example syntax to use mount -t smbfs is correct ... it is how I use a linux client anyway ... but if you are going to use smbmount then you have to enable file sharing on your xp host (right click a folder to share / share) ... you will want to check the firewall settings to make sure the file/printer sharing ports are allowed.

[abidsultan]

Yes, you are right, its 5.5.3, and I am not aware of v6. I was refering to sharedfolders, so any idea to make it functional in 5.5.3?

[normfox]

I don't know about VMware's shared folders but, I've got samba up and sharing folders between Suse Linux (host) and XP(guest) most Linux distros have a fairly easy to set up GUI for samba these days. What distro are you running?

[csmithtx]

Yes, you are right, its 5.5.3, and I am not aware of v6. I was refering to sharedfolders, so any idea to make it functional in 5.5.3?

Yes ... use a supported linux kernel found in the vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/binary folder ...

then make sure you install the vmware-tools in the linux client ... specifically make sure your vmhgfs module is built for your kernel!

then shared folders works just like referenced above for vmware-workstation-6

helpful linux client commands: vmhgfsclient and mount -a -t vmhgfs