bridge network in virtualbox with tap-win32

This is a follow up on my previous blog at http://fooksheng.blogspot.com/2009/06/using-bridge-networking-on-virtualbox.html

In case you need a network interface that is always up, not like your Ethernet card on Windows that depends on whether a cable is plugged in or your wireless network interface, which you might sometimes switch it off.

Thanks to tap-win 32, this can be achieved easily.

1) Install tap-win 32, see http://colinux.wikia.com/wiki/TAP-Win32_Adapter_V8_(coLinux)

2) Go to the Properties of the Tap-win 32 network interface, then click on the Configure button and then click the Advance tab, change the Media Status to Always Connected.




3) Now the network interface is always connected, and you can follow the steps in http://fooksheng.blogspot.com/2009/06/using-bridge-networking-on-virtualbox.html to configure your bridge network.

using bridge networking on VirtualBox

I wanted to run Ubuntu as a guest on my Windows and I need to access ubuntu's web server (LAMP) from my Windows...

NAT does not work, and surprisingly Host-only mode does not either... i don't know why.. it should be simple a bug or something wrong on my side..

anyway it is a long and tedious process.... with lots of reboots of my ubuntu


now the steps to do it:

1) select Bridge adapter and choose an ACTIVE network card, and for my case it is my wireless nic

Note: This simple step is the cause of my frustrations... I choose my Ethernet nic but it is not active because Windows does not detect a cable - one of the many limitations of windows - and I go on to install TAP-Win32, after reading articles like http://samiux.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/bridge-network-interface-on-virtualbox/




2) take note of the ip setting of the active nic that u have chosen, and let's say it is 192.168.100.1/24

3) Boot Ubuntu and edit /etc/network/interface to be:

fs@ubuntu:~$ more /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.100.4
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.100.1


Here I choose 192.168.100.4, it can be anything, as long as it does not conflict with the active nic in step 1 or other ip in the network... u must be careful if your network is big with many machines.



That's it, reboot Ubuntu and u should be able to ping to it from Windows.


fook sheng

free ssh client (windows) - Bitwise from http://www.bitvise.com/index

This free ssh client offer nice gui

download it and try it

http://www.bitvise.com/

fook sheng

speed test for your internet connection

i did a speed test when i install µTorrent (http://www.utorrent.com) and here is it:

another test:




Perhaps Singtel should use this data when they advertise their broadband packages....

Free alternative to Partition Magic

There are quite a few... but I'm attracted to GParted from GNU (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/) as it is GNU you know :) They also provide a Live CD (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php) too.

I choose to boot GPartedLive from a thumbdrive instead and I follow Choice 1 from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php

It didn't work 100% and so I try Choice 2 from the same page and I was able to delete my Linux partitions created by Debian and create one NTFS partition and a smaller ext3 partition for my Ubuntu (ya I chose Ubuntu for WPA support... ) ... but all is well until I realise it is better for me to combine the 2 NTFS partitions together and GParted just couldn't do that...

more googling.... and came EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition (http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm)

installation is easy and the user interface is nice..

but it don't seem to recognise what type of partition u have except for NTFS and FAT... so I think it is best to use both GParted and EASEUS together...

fook sheng

Free alternative to Norton Ghost

I reinstall my laptop again due to various reasons, mainly because my laptop lacks Intel-VT and I can't run Xen. Hence I have to fall back to dual boot in order to have Ubuntu running on my hardware (no VMWare or VirtualBox does not help, I need wireless support for my Ubuntu to try some wireless security stuff).

But then Norton Ghost came to my mind, and along with it, I managed to find several free alternatives to Ghost. They are Clonezilla (http://clonezilla.org/) , FOG (http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeghost/) and partimage http://www.partimage.org).

It seems to me that Clonezilla is the best, but i need to first get my first a spare and big harddisk to try it out first.

Free software is great!!!