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It’s a good idea to use the “latest and greatest” Linux distribution (in our case Fedora 8) as a “launching pad” for Linux software. If we can exchange files between Fedora 8 and Windows XP, it will be great and will fit our goal. Note that if we establish a virtual network that includes VM with Fedora 8 and Windows XP as the host operating system, we can relax the security restrictions a little bit, which should be in place in real networks. For instance, consider the following.

VM is not a physical box, so even if “bad guys” ever got control of a VM, it’s relatively easy to reinstall and any possible damage can be kept minimal by very simple measures, such as backing up on a regular basis. I recommend that you make a clone of your VM just after setup and copy all important files from the VM to Windows XP just before you logoff from the VM.

The following is a description on how to do it.

As Windows XP serves as a gateway, all necessary security measures (including but not limited to firewalls, etc.) can be taken here. In fact, within this concept we don’t need a firewall and SE Linux on a VM from a pure security point of view. Moreover, certain things that are unacceptable in a conventional Linux box are okay in our case, as security is provided by the Windows XP host.

Fedora 8 Installation
If you have high-speed Internet, downloading an ISO image of the Fedora 8 distribution DVD is not a problem. Note that you will need Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso for a typical Windows PC; however, you may want to adjust which file is necessary to download to a configuration of your own PC.

Downloading will take several hours at around 200 Kb/s speed. After you download the ISO image, it’s a good idea to check around to avoid security risks related to possible attacks such as “man in the middle.” First check the ISO image for possible malware (viruses, Trojan horses, etc.) with your favorite Windows XP tool (e.g., Norton). Further it will be assumed that you will check for malware in all downloads from the Internet listed below.

Then check if checksum is correct. You can find checksum for the image (suppose you need Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso) here.

If you don’t have a tool to calculate the needed checksum, I recommend a free open source utility called Jacksum from http://www.jonelo.de/java/jacksum/index.html. All you need to run Jacksum is a standard JDK (J2SE6 at the moment) and the standard settings, which are described in my previous article. To install the utility just download the zip file from this here to a certain directory that will be referred to as installdirectory. For instance I use C:\Documents and Settings\Anatoly\My Documents\Jacksum. Further it will be assumed that you will adjust specific directories, parameters, etc., to your own settings. After that, unzip the file with one of the corresponding tools (WinZip, etc.). If you don’t have one, you may want to download and install a free open sourced utility called PeaZip from http://peazip.sourceforge.net/.

After you install Jacksum in installdirectory, edit the last line of the included jacksum.bat, similar to the following example: java -jar "C:\Documents and Settings\Anatoly\My Documents\Jacksum\jacksum.jar" %*. To obtain a checksum (in this case SHA1 is used), issue a command like this from the command prompt window jacksum -a sha1 "C:\Documents and Settings\Anatoly\My Documents\Fedora 8\Fedora-8-i386-DVD.iso".

If the security check is okay, select the VM with Fedora 8 settings as shown in Figure 1. Note that the ISO image of the Fedora 8 installation DVD is used as a CD/DVD drive within the VM in question, which is convenient. Installation per se is easy. Which system components you install is not important as you can always add or remove programs later. However, you may choose to not install SE Linux and the firewall for reasons mentioned earlier. I’ll also describe several techniques to interact between Fedora 8 VM and Windows XP for which it’s convenient not to have SE Linux and a firewall installed.

Can’t Install VMWare Tools? Here’s How
The standard technique for file swapping between VMs under WMWare 5 and Windows XP is to install VMWare 5 tools. However, this installation wasn’t easy even for Fedora Core 5. You may conclude that it’s even harder for the more sophisticated Fedora 8. In my previous article, I proposed running an FTP server on Windows and exchanging files this way. Here is another technique that’s more efficient for Fedora 8 – the free open source tool WinSCP. You can download it from http://winscp.net/eng/index.php and install on your Windows XP box. Now within the Fedora 8 terminal, issue a command ifconfig. Note “Intet Addr” within the command output. Say it is 192.168.227.138 (adjust this value to your own configuration!). That’s it. You'll be able to use this address to connect to the Fedora 8 VM from the Windows XP host using your Fedora 8 user’s logonId/password. Typically the WinSCP screen has two panels, and each panel will represent certain locations within the connected computers (in our case within a VM with Fedora 8 and Windows XP host).

To exchange files, just highlight them as usual in Windows (for instance, by clicking on icons that represent files with a mouse/tablet) and press F5. You’ll see files copied to another panel (i.e., to/from Fedora 8 / Windows XP). Note that within WinSCP you can apply the Windows technique of choosing files for Fedora 8 VM. Save the described session within WinSCP under some meaningful name (say Fedora 8). Also it may be possible to run a remote Fedora 8 terminal on Windows XP with WinSCP and PuTTY (note that PuTTY can be obtained from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/). To use both of them together and avoid typing the Fedora 8 user Logon ID/ password, select Options | Preferences | Integration. Within the “PuTTY path” text box enter a path to your PuTTY .exe file (you have an option to browse to it) and check “Remember Session Pathword and path to it in the PuTTY” checkbox.

As with the solution described in my previous article, no configuration file changes and no recompilation of any kind is needed to exchange data between the Windows XP host and the VM with Fedora 8.

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