One would think that it would be straightforward, work off the bat, or at least have some reasonable documentation. Unfortunately, no!

I needed host networking to be able to access network resources (Samba shares etc.) which does not work if the guest OS is on NAT 😦

Solving it was easy though… I assume Vista is installed as a guest with the guest additions and that your user account is a part of the vboxusers group.

On the linux host, first install bridge utils. I run Ubuntu, so it was as easy as:

$ sudo aptitude install bridge-utils

Next, you need to set up the bridge; again, easy on Ubuntu:

add the following section to /etc/network/interfaces

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth1

Add the interfaces to VirtualBox

$ sudo VBoxAddIF vbox0 ‘shri’ br0

Within the VirtualBox Guest settings, choose Host Networking and fo the interface, choose br0

bring the interface up:

$ sudo ifup br0

and start your guest os… et voila, it just works…