I have searched using Google and here I have searched the forum, all without success. Google turned up a few possibilities, but they turned out not to be helpful to me at my current level of knowledge.

I have 32bit XP running in a QEMU/KVM virtual machine. I now want to do some printing from the client, but I can't work out how to set up the client to do this.

The client can ping the host, but it cannot browse the Internet, for example.

Can anyone help, or point me to a SIMPLE primer that will take me through it step-by-step?

Thanks in advance.

Sounds like you have the guest set up ok and just need to get traffic passing through the host. Networking is a complex topic, but here's a guide that covers just virtual setup.

https://wiki.libvirt.org/page/VirtualNetworking

I don't know the details of your setup but you may just need to set up NAT and turn on packet forwarding.

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Yes, that's the case. The client WinXP runs as well as it ever did (smile) and I now have a need to get the network running between guest and host. My host is connected to my home network OK.

Thanks very much for the link - I will study it well and no doubt learn all about NAT and packet forwarding. "8-)

Well, I now know more about NAT than I did earlier today ... but it has not helped. Sigh

I followed the instructions at your link, but still cannot 'see' the Internet from the client. As before, I can ping the host successfully. BTW, the content of the link did not refer specifically to packet forwarding and I wonder if this is a firewall setting I need to implement?

I will keep digging.

My technique for this is to:
- Have CUPS running on the host with a raw printer queue for the printer to be used.
- Have Samba running on the host to make the CUPS printer queue available.
- Have networking set up so that the client can see the host printer resource. For this, I use a bridge interface on the host containing my real NIC and a tap interface. When starting the VM, I use these options to qemu-kvm
The second of those options assumes that the virtio-win drivers have been installed on the client.
You also need to have the native Windows printer driver installed in the client.

The cheat technique is to install a PDF printer in the client, then print the generated files from the host.

Thanks for all the help allend and smallpond - much appreciated.

I have finally arrived at a working solution, although some of the journey demanded the use of incantations and spells!

My WinXP guest was able to ping my network router and a ping to www.google.com was correctly handled, so I surmised my network was already functioning perfectly.

Although my printer is shared from the host, WinXP could not see it. After much wrestling and swearing, I decided to key in the CUPS name and address of the printer as the URL in the 'Add Printer' wizard in XP. The printer is an HP6950 for which there are no XP drivers, so I just picked the highest-numbered colour driver in the XP's list - HP Deskjet 990c. To my amazement, it worked first time, test page and all!

Then I battled with XP's version of Internet Destroyer. So many things are crippled and broken in this software, I ended up installing Opera 36 and again it worked first time.

Now if only I could connect XP to my Public folder so I might easily transfer files between host and guest, I would be ecstatic ...

Google was my friend. I found and adapted the instructions at https://www.server-world.info/en/not...28&p=samba&f=1 and all worked as it said on the packet.