So, this one is going to sound a bit odd. And I have to be a bit cagey about some details due to confidentiality reasons.
I have RoboGuide and a Linux Virtual Machine (running under VirtualBox), both running on the same Windows 7 host computer. The VM is a "black box" that I can't make changes to (or even log into), but it's basically a web server, and I've confirmed that it's running correctly using a web browser on the host.
Now, I'm supposed to establish socket communications from my RG cell to the VM. I've configured my RG robot (port 1) with an IP address and subnet (192.168.99.*, 255.255.255.0) that are compatible with the VM. But I can't ping the RG robot on that IP from my host.
From trawling the forum archives, it appears that RG robots normally show up on 127.0.0.1 (localhost) on the host, and just have Fanuc-specific ports open, and pinging to the virtual robot's assigned IP just doesn't work. If I point the host's web browser at that IP, I get a web page showing part of the iPendant interface. I don't have a second computer handy to plug in at the moment, but the impression I have from the archives is that an external computer attempting to connect to the RG robot would have to connect to the IP of the host, and RG would re-direct any Fanuc-specific port requests from the host interface into RG (anything on port 9000, for example).
So, the two individual pieces appear to work correctly, in isolation, on this host. But I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to get them to talk to each other. The brute-force solution would obviously be to run RG and the VM each on a separate box, and use a real ethernet connection between them. But I'm hoping to avoid that. Has anyone ever tried something like this? I'm wondering if there's a direct way to make this work, or if perhaps I'll have to set up some custom ip-routing tables in the host