Sharing Mac OS X 10.4 PPPoE connection virtually with Windows XP
Contents
2 Sharing the Mac PPPoE Connection with Ubuntu 9.04 Guest running inside VirtualBox
1 Virtual Windows
My personal laptop is a Macbook Pro. It meets all my needs except when it comes to playing PC cricket games which run only on Windows. In order to play these games I installed Windows XP inside Parallels Desktop.
The advantage of using Parallels Desktop as opposed to my other favorite virtualization software VirtualBox is the security aspect as mentioned here by Alan in Windows Warning section. That too is not a problem as long as you play safe!
Installing Windows XP in either Parallels or VirtualBox is a breeze. The only problem that I faced was sharing my PPPoE internet connection on OS X with the Windows XP guest.
In order to share the PPPoE connection, I followed the steps described here choosing Built-in-Ethernet as the connection to be shared. Ensure that you start the sharing by clicking the Start button which then changes to Stop.
Aftering sharing the connection, open Parallels Desktop and choose your Windows XP virtual machine that you installed. Check that Shared Networking option is chosen under Networking Options.
Ensure that your PPPoE connection is running before you run the Windows XP virtual machine. After Windows XP has booted up, open your IE. Ensure that Tools → Internet Options → Connections → LAN Settings has the Automatically detect settings option enabled.
Now browse to say google.com and you will be online in the Windows guest via the internet connection on your Mac host!.
2 Sharing the Mac PPPoE Connection with Ubuntu 9.04 Guest running inside VirtualBox
After you have shared your Mac PPPoE Connection as explained above, just run your VirtuaBox Ubuntu guest. After it boots up, navigate to google.com in Firefox and you will be online in the Windows guest via Internet connection on your Mac host!