Fedora 12 booting in VMWare WS, but cannot mount/access Windows Host

[Rex123]

I have Fedora 12 (Fedora-12-i686-Live.iso) installed and booting in a VMWare workstation (version 6.5.3). I am able to login as the LiveUser.

I need information on how to access the drives on my host which is WindowsXP. My C: on the host is shared, and my network adapter for the VM is "NAT".

The only directory listed in my /mnt directory is "live".

My Fedora enviornment is "bare bones". There is nothing installed except for the original files from the "iso" loading procedure.

I also have been unable to get the VMWare tools installed, and I don't know if this is related. I don't mind bypassing this if this isn't required. My only desire right now is to access my C:

Thanks in advance for any help/suggestions.

[CSchwangler]

I don't know VMWare, but in VirtualBox you would need to configure shared folders if you wanted to access the host machine. This protects the host from the VM. With respect to VMWare tools, do you get any error messages?
Again, for VirtualBox you would install
- kernel-headers package
- kernel-devel package (kernel source)
- gcc, gcc-c++
- dkms

http://gamblis.com/2010/02/12/how-to...-in-fedora-12/

[Rex123]

Thanks for the reply CS.
VMWare does have the shared folders option, and I specified my C as a shared folder. With the VMWare tools, I thought that VMWare puts a copy of the tools inside the Fedora filesystem, but I can't find it to launch it. I'll try to pursue that with the VMWare team.

Is your setup similar to mine, where you have a VM with Fedora loaded, and a host with Windows? And if you do, when you access your Windows, I'm presuming you also have to mount the shared folder into the Fedora filesystem as a path, correct?

[CSchwangler]

In VirtualBox, the Guest Additions are mounted as a "virtual CD", from which they can be installed, i.e. they appear on the desktop as if it would be a normal CD put into the drive. You would then change into the directory where the CD is mounted and execute

sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

This would setup VirtualBox Guest Additions and compile the kernel modules.

One of my setups is Windows 7 as host and Fedora as guest, but I haven't tried to share a whole drive with the guest. I am usually sharing particular folders. You share the folder from within the VM the same way as you would mount an ordinary network share

mount -t vboxsf [-o OPTIONS] sharename mountpoint

[Rex123]

Ok, I'll try your sample (sharing a folder instead of the entire drive, and alo your mount type)

Thanks for your time with this! I greatly appreciate it.
Regards,
---Rex

[Rex123]

I just found the problem...
I was using the LiveUser which blocks my CD device (to install VMWare tools), and didn't retain any of my downloads or commands that I executed.
After booting the ISO, I used the "Install to Disk" option and now I'm able to load VMWare tools.
I'll try the mounting later after I do all my updates....

[presumedhuman]

@Rex123
Did you ever find a solution to your shared folder access?

Thanks,
ph