i cant exactly say what i want, i miss all terms. i will just try:
i got a PC with dual-boot (debian-lenny and sid). On both i got VirtualBox installed, most of the guests are linux and on each is one Windows-OS.

I want to learn about networking under those circumstances. I had a very short look in samba and ssh (another thing i heard about is vnc).

One of you knows a very easy tutorial on networking from host to virtualbox. If possible step by step (and really easy :-) ).

All the info i find is bout setting up the samba-"server", but i wouldnt even know how to reach it from the "client" (epecially the windows-side is laying in complete darkness...)

sorry, thats all i can say, im just looking for how-to`s (or if one might help, but i wont be able to answer qualified questions atm).

greetings

Testing your samba configuration

You want to test your samba configuration for users Ahmed run the following command

#smbclient -L //debianserver -U Ahmed

plz see this link here

thanks, but not exactly what i was looking for:
a)really easy, not advanced and b) a How-to set it up,step by step,not how to integrate it into an existing network c) how to reach it from vbox-guest:windows (or linux)

I`ll check the google-results if i may find something.
greetings

Networking between virtual machines, the host and other computers on the LAN and thence, via the gateway, to the Internet is possible.

The first thing to think about is whether you want the virtual machines to have their own addresses on the LAN or whether you want them to use the host as a "NAT"ting router. Using the host as a "NAT"ting router (VirtualBox default) means that other computers on the LAN cannot initiate communication with the virtual machines so they cannot be servers on the LAN. This is the same as when you connect to the Internet via a "NAT"ting router, the usual setup; computers on the LAN cannot be used as servers on the Internet (unless you configure the router to do port forwarding).

Once you have got the IP stuff set up the way you want it you can start working on networking services such as setting up Samba on the (Linux) host to share files with Windows guests/clients or setting up NFS on the the (Linux) host to share files with Linux guests/clients or setting up DNSmasq on the host to provide DNS services to the hosts or ... ssh or ...

Regards a Windows computer accessing a file system served by Samba, from the Windows perspective it is just like any other shared drive.

EDIT: at the IP level, you also need to decide whether you want to use DHCP or not. It's probably easier not to unless any of your computers may also be connected to other LANs which se DHCP, for example a portable computer.

thanks a lot,
(though its not easy to understand it completely :-) )

Yesterday i stumbled over some info and added a second network-adapter in the network settings:
host-only-adapter with the name vboxneth0
I was able to reach the guest from the host and vice-versa with ssh :-)
(when i just replaced the NAT i didnt have got internet in the guest no more. Another choice gave me access from host to guest, but not the other way around).

i got a question according to this:
it needs to be set-up in virtualbox-settings (like i did above) or the hosts /etc/network/interfaces or in the guest?

thanks again, your explanation is excellent, but i will need to read a bit in addition to understand it completely.
greetings

edit: i guess its important: from the host i only may connect to the net via pppoeconf.

I understand it is hard to explain exactly what you want to do when you are learning and that many people like to learn by experimenting ... but (!) we can't tell you how to do it without knowing what you want to do!

Using versions of VirtualBox after 2.1 there are no changes required to networking on the host (you can forget about tap and tun and bridging if you have stumbled upon them during your researches). There are changes to be made to the network adapter (NIC) configuration for the virtual machines; this is done using VirtualBox on the host and each OS running as a guest has to configure its NIC in exactly the same way an OS running on real hardware has to configure its NIC. This may be by DHCP or by fixed configuration -- of IP, netmask and default gateway (and DNS servers on Windows; on Linux, DNS server configuration is usually done in /etc/nsswitch and /etc/resolv.conf).

One of the things that is very hard when you are learning this stuff is that so many pages on the Internet are cook-book "how to", whereas you thirst to understand what all the pieces are and how they fit together. Sometimes Wikipedia is good for that. The most helpful resource I found as an introduction to (TCP/IP) networking was Microsoft's MCSE book but that is not AFAIK available free on the Internet

To master this stuff you need to understand what IP, NAT and DNS are. Good tools for troubleshooting are ifconfig (ipconfig on Windows) ping (by name and by IP address), nslookup and maybe traceroute.

Ok, a "bit" of stuff i got now, ssh works (so far) and i gotta move on. Its a bit more than a bit :-)

I use wikipedia to check the terms and my books (mainly wikipedia), but for me the problem is the other way around:
the info i get is mainly documentation, but i cant find how-to`s.
(+i`m more of an experimenting one, not that much of a reader when it comes to the pc. with networking that way doesnt seem to work :-) )

thanks for your hints, ill check all that and it will keep me buisy for a while.