File Sharing Issue

[DanHO]

I'm considering switching from Parallels to Fusion because the latter seems to solve some synching issues with my USB Palm device. However, I'm having some trouble with file sharing. My guest OS is Windows XP Pro, and I want to move the "My Documents" folder to a shared drive on the Mac. This is the setup I used with Parallels, but I can't get it to work with Fusion. The problem I'm having is that some permissions issue seems to be messing me up.

Here is what I'm doing:

Created the shared directory during "easy install"

Completely installed and updated XP

Mapped the shared directory to 'z:' drive

Manually create "z:\My Documents" folder (name doesn't matter, problem always happens)

Verify that I can create folders or files manually under z:\My Documents

Try to move My Documents to z:\My Documents; it fails when it tries to copy "My Pictures"

If I go into z:\My Documents now, I can't create files or folders anymore, I get "access denied"

I tried the same thing, where the only difference was that I mapped to a drive on a different PC, and it worked fine.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[rcardona2k]

I'm not sure what's happening with your shared folders, but there is another way to share folders from OS X that may work for you. In OS X, open System Preferences > Sharing > Services and check Windows sharing. At the bottom of the list of Services, the panel tells you how to access your Mac from Windows, e.g. "Windows users can access your computer at
192.168.1.102\rcardona"

In a Fusion VM, map the share you enabled via Tools > Map Network Drive. Enter in the folder from above. When asked to login, use your OS X login information. Try copying your files to this drive. It should work the same as when you copy files to another PC.

[DanHO]

I'm not eager to have Windows file sharing enabled on OS X; I'd much rather use the "private" sharing between OS X and the guest PC. I would give it a try, but do you know of any other way for the guest to access the server other than the IP address? I routinely connect to several different networks using DHCP, and the IP address changes. Obviously the mapping would be broken when I switch to a different network.

[rcardona2k]

If you add a second virtual network adapter to the guest OS, you can set it to host-only networking, the secondary guest VM address can be static or DHCP (Fusion has a private DHCP service on the host-only network). Your host's host-only address will remain static no matter what the primary interface address is. And this will keep a private connection for sharing available even if the host doesn't have a working primary IP address, e.g.

Host primary en0 (wired) or en1 (wireless) can be dynamic, DHCP

Private host only network, vmnet8, has a static address by default, mine is 192.168.8.1

Guest OS has a primary interface ("Network") that can be bridged or NAT to the host primary network connection.

Add a second GuestOS network interface, ("Network 2") as a private host-only network. This will be either DHCP or static. Mine is static on 192.168.8.2.

I can access the host on the secondary, private network interface at all times over
192.168.8.1\rcardona. Yes, if someone knows your primary IP address they can access your Mac on via samba. But they would have to know an account username/password too. If you want to block Windows sharing over the primary host interface you can setup a bind interface in samba's conf. You can also setup additional shares besides your home directory. Exercises left to the reader.

[DanHO]

Great idea; your workaround... well... works! Many thanks for the suggestion.

I didn't mark this as answered since this really is a workaround and not a solution to the original problem. It would be nice if VMWare file sharing could be used instead.

Thanks again for your help!

[rcardona2k]

Of course it works :smileywink:

While I like VMware Shared Folders they can be quirky for date/time syncing, permissions and other specialized operations across heterogenerous host filesystems. I think there is more investment and maturity in the Samba/smb-client codebase which is why it works differently. And one-side of CIFS path is "out-of-the-box" Windows code (client) aka more "standardized", if you will.

Feel free to open a support ticket with VMware so they can investigate issues with Shared Folders.

In my experience, virtualizing the OS is "easy," networking is 10x harder.