How to connect from a VirtualBox guest (XP) to a running JBoss server on the host?

Question

First off, I'll say I'm not 100% certain this is the correct location for this question. I was contemplating stackoverflow, but I don't think there's much in the way of code that has to do with this: it's a matter of networking.

So I'm on a computer running Win7, that is hosting a JBoss server on port 8180 and also running a VirtualBox guest, which is XP. I need to be able to connect from inside the guest to the running JBoss on the host. This is to allow for easily testing different versions of IE on the running server.

The default network setting for VirtualBox is NAT. What I have done that partially works, is doing ipconfig in the guest, looking at the Default Gateway, and connecting to default_gateway:8180

This actually does bring up the server login page, so it looks like something is working, but when I type in my credentials and hit login, nothing happens.

It's as if the data doesn't get transmitted back through to the host.

Answer 1

Simply change your network configuration from NAT to bridged.

This will make it appear that your virtual machine is actually connected to your LAN just like any other computer. Then, you should be able to ping the IP of your VM from the VM's host, and vice-versa. If you can get ping to work, then you should be good to go.