Hi

I have a vmplayer virtual machine running puppy linux on my windows xp partition. I want to be able to share files between them without fiddling about with a USB pendrive, so I set up a simple samba share between them - I activated "sharing" for the Shared Documents folder in XP and then mounted it on the linux guest.

However, I am concerned about the basic nature of sharing the documents in XP this way - anybody could connect to the Shared Documents folder it seems.

I would like to protect the file share by only making it accessible to certain IP addresses and also adding a password, but Documents sharing feature (Properties->Share when you right click on a folder) does not have this facility.

Is there anyway I can enable these features, or is there a better piece of (free) software out there that handles SMB file sharing in Windows that I could use?

Thanks

VMWare sets up a private samba network between the host and the guest. I don't think it can be accessed from outside, though I am not certain of that and have never tried it.

I do know that on my system an ifconfig shows me the internal network address, but the only addresses I see for the host and the guest are the public addresses when I browse from another computer.

Thanks, but that's not really relevant to what I was asking.

I know that the vmware's internal samba network is just that - internal.

My question is about sharing Documents in XP.

It's very easy to make a linux guest folder available to the Windows XP host. What I would like to be able to do is offer a folder on the host only to the guest linux machine.

Currently, using the simple Shared Documents feature which is available when you right click and go to Properties->Sharing, I can only make the guest folder available anybody and everybody on any network.

(In order for samba on the guest linux machine to 'see' what directories on the host machine are available to mount over vmnet1, sharing as described above has to be enabled for whichever directories you want to share).

However, this is not very secure as you're not able to put any sort of password controls/ IP controls on who can access the shared documents.

Is there any more professional/better software out there that people use to do this?

I own VMware Workstation and I'm able to target which directories I want to share between the host and the virtual machines. Maybe VMware Player doesn't have this feature. Or you are greatly over complicating file sharing since all you need to do is target your "home" folder to guaranty privacy - assuming you haven't turned sharing on for it.

OK, I'm with you now. You would have to use a firewall on the Windows machine to block the shares from the view of any external machines. Windows doesn't provide the facilities to let you choose your host.

You can adjust the permissions to the shared folder, removing the "everyone" user and tightening permissions on just who is allowed to access the folder, but you can't keep it from being visible.

XP Pro will require an outside machine to authenticate (meaning you'll be prompted for username/password in order to access the share). I don't know what XP Home will do, but file security and permissions is one of the places where XP Home is cut down from Pro.

I have no idea how vmware works, but I think that xp can give specific rights to various user groups (i.e. administrators, local users, everybody, etc). You could try to make a special group with that samba "user" as member.

Edit:
Perhaps, it is possible to "hide" it given similar access permissions to the parent folder.

Hmmm, not really... XP has "administrator" and "limited user" and that's about it. About the only other setting you can change is the login picture!


Thanks jiml8, seems like the only proper answer is a properly configured firewall to enable some sort of IP protection. Just shows the lousiness of XP when comes to any sort of networking.

You must be using XP Home. XP Pro has a lot more capability that way. As I said in my previous post, this is one of the places where XP was cut down to make the "home" version.