Access VM over network

I started to mess with NAT and port forwarding, but decided that was a road to avoid.
Bridged networking looks like it should just work.

You are correct.  You should not have to do NAT of forwarding with bridged networking.  Your VM should be able to talk to the network directly.

We use CentOS for our hosts so I can't really say much about a Windows environment. It is very strange that connections are going outbound but not inbound.

As you suggest (and Neil confirms), bridged networking should just work! It almost sounds as if its doing a host only and/or NAT environment even though you've set it to bridged.

Perhaps try doing a traceroute from another machine to your TKL so you can see where the connection is stalling? On my LAN if I traceroute the IP of a VM it will only be 2 hops (VM host, VM guest) which I imagine would be standard.

I vaguely recall having a similar problem ages ago (with VBox v2.x on WinServer 2k3) that originally I set up with host only networking then changed to bridged and I couldn't get it to work and ended up just starting again (which for whatever reason seemed to solve it). Hopefully you won't have to go to that extent but could be an option to try (ie install a new TKL VM with the desired options then once working migrate your data from original VM).

 Good luck!

Wes, I'm only guessing, but you might need to enable ip forwarding on your Windows 2003 host.  See the article at Microsoft's tech support.  Good Luck.

Wes, sorry that IP forwarding wasn't helpful.  I can't help much because I don't use Windows as a host with VirtualBox.  I can only say that VB bridge mode works fine on a Ubuntu host.  Have you tried searching the VirtualBox on Windows Hosts forum?  I see some reports of problems with VB 3.0 on Windows hosts, but a quick scan didn't reveal anyone with your exact symptoms.  Perhaps you could post there and get a more knowledgable response.

Tried IP forwarding.  Didn't change anything.

Tried a new VM, ensuring bridged networking from the beginning.   Same result: I can get out from the guest, can get to the guest from the host, but not to the guest from anywhere else on the network.

I actually have a two unused network cards in this computer, so I'm going to see if I can plug into one of those and tell it to listen for that IP or something.

I don't know anything about arp, but I thought maybe I could add static routes for that ip to the host mac, or something. Just grasping at straws.

Are there other VM host softwares that I could try?  Free/OSS would be nice, but not necessary.

Its free but not open source. You need to sign up to get a serial number before you can use it. Its a fairly large download but works really well for me in a small business environment. It includes web based management so allows easy managent from any LAN conected PC (or even remotely if you set it up). Have a look here.

When we next upgrade hardware I will look to install something like Proxmox and run Server2k3 as a guest on that. But until then I find this setup quite workable.

I want linux ( Redhat or Centos ) OS virtual appliances with CISCO VPN Client & rdesktop, anyone help me where I can find that virtual appliances. or any other way to create virtual appliances of linux  OS with CISCO VPN Client & rdesktop.

alok.singh80@gmail.com