I've got VirtualBox set up so that I can access a web server on the guest from the host, using Bridged Networking. as I understand it, with Bridged Networking the guest machine gets internet access in the same way the host machine does – by getting an IP from your router, for example…
my problem is that I find myself wanting to work while traveling (ex: on a train), where I may not have internet access. without internet access, Bridged Networking falls apart.
it seems like there ought to be a way to set up Virtual Box so that there's some entirely made-up network that I can use, without a real one. I've tried "Internal Network" and "Host-only Adapter", which seem like they should do the job, but either they don't do what I want, or I'm misunderstanding how to use them.
tl;dr: is there a way I can access my guest machine's web server (and/or other network services) even when the host is without internet access?
Best Answer
Funnily enough I have been doing this exact same thing today on my Dell Mini 9. Host OS is Windows 7, guest is Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) - everything working fine with bridged networking connecting from host to an R-server on the guest. But away from my network on the train I couldn't connect.
Eventually got it to work by using host-only networking, static IP on guest and setting a static IP on the virtualbox host adapter, and now works fine either connected to network or not. Only issue is that I can't connect to the guest from the rest of my network. I don't need to. (I didn't really want to use NAT because my home network uses the 192.168.. IP range)
Update by also bridging the virtualbox host adapter and the real network interface and again setting a fixed IP address on the bridge I can connect from my network to the guest.