VMware: Shared folders using samba server

In case you’re using the VMware server on a linux host and you want to have shared folder access from guest system like in vmware workstation, you can achieve this feature by setting up a samba server.

Install Samba

If you don?t already have Samba installed, now would be a good time to do it:

# apt-get install samba

Start Samba Server

# /etc/init.d/samba start

Create Samba User

To access the samba shares on the host from within the vm guets you need to create a samba user with password.

# smbpasswd -a username

The username has to be an existing linux user account on the host.

Enable Samba Security

Open /etc/samba/smb.conf search and uncomment the following line (remove the preceding semicolon if there is one):

security = user

Don’t close the editor yet.

Optional: Bind Interfaces for Samba

If you are only using Samba for sharing with VMware, you can restrict access to VMware networks only. So just bind samba to the VMware network interfaces for communication between hosts and guests. This means Samba ignores any communications that do not originate from these interfaces.

Search and uncomment the following line in smb.conf

bind interfaces only = true

Add the following blow this.

interfaces = vmnet0 vmnet1 vmnet8

These are the virtual interfaces VMware uses for bridged, host only and NAT networking.

Create Samba Shared Folder

Scroll down to the end of smb.conf and add the following lines for your shared folder:

[SHARE]
path = /path/to/your/shared_folder
read only = no
valid users = your_samba_user
create mask = 0775
directory mask = 0775

Save and exit.

Restart Samba

# /etc/init.d/samba restart

Ok, that’s it.

Now, depending on what type of vmware networking your guest system uses get the ip of your host system.

Connecting to shared folder within windows guest

Having worked out what IP address to connect to, you should now be able to connect to your share from within windows.

Do the following steps:

1. Open up windows explorer
2. In address line, enter: “\\host_IP\your_shared_folder”
3. Enter username/password in the dialog
   

Done.