Hey,

How do I set up a network in VMware for sharing files from my host OS (ubuntu) to my guest OS (XP). I have various folders that are samba shared on the network in ubuntu, but VMWare doesn't pick up on these. Any ideas?

Which version of vmware are you running?
VMware player or workstation?
Have you configured bridged networking?
If you have vmware workstation, you have "shared folders" that do the trick ...

Yer it's workstation. I do have shared folders, but I can't seem to see my samba shares in VMWare. The networking thing has me stumped a little: Basically, I don't know which networking to set up on VMware.: NAT, Bridged, host only etc. I don't care about being able to access the internet from the Guest, but I want to share files. Also the Uni network that I am on doesn't like networking on VMWare, as it bans me from the network if VMWare is trying to access the external network (basically because the virtual machine is trying to gain it's own IP and the network won't allow 2 IPs on one port). So simply put:
1. What networking do I need to set up in VMWare
2. How do I configure this on the Host (Ubuntu) side.
3. How do I configure this on the Guest (XP) side??

Thank in advance.

In vmware, you configure shared folders, that are local folders on you ubuntu box ...

Choose to confugure the virtual machine, advanced tab, shared folders.... click add and give it a name, a path ... i think there is also a description field you can fill in ... this is out of the top of my head ...
in the windowsxp guest you type \\.host\ to see the available shared folders .... or \\.host\sharename to see a specific one ...
hope this helps ...

or you could copy this into your vmx file, the file you open with vmware workstation without the ###'s ...
###
sharedFolder0.present = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.enabled = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.readAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.writeAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder0.hostPath = "/home/thecarpy/cvs"
sharedFolder0.guestName = "cvs"
sharedFolder0.expiration = "never"
sharedFolder1.present = "TRUE"
sharedFolder1.enabled = "TRUE"
sharedFolder1.readAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder1.writeAccess = "TRUE"
sharedFolder1.hostPath = "/home/hans"
sharedFolder1.guestName = "HOME"
sharedFolder1.expiration = "never"
sharedFolder.maxNum = "10"
###


I have two folders shared:
cvs
/home/thecarpy/cvs
and HOME
/home/hans

host only networking is cool for this to work .... just wanted to make sure that you did not get the IP's wrong ... like host only trying to access the ip of the host network ....

On vm workstation 5.5 you can drag the files directly onto the vm os. I did it on accident once and was happy to find out you can do it.

I don't have 5.5, and can't work out how to update it!! Carpy, your solution of editing the .vmx file worked 100% thanks a lot, I knew that it wouldn't be difficult to do, but I couldn't work out where to input it. Thanks for your help guys.