ubuntu xp vmware cluster f...er...filesharing

[Eric S. Johansson]

here's the scene.  I can't get away from XP.  Speech recognition, yada 
yada yada.  I am running VM Ware with ubuntu in a couple of virtual 
machines.  My goal is to have a common workspace between any number of 
virtual machines.  The common workspace should be accessible no matter 
which combination of virtual machines are running.  For example if I 
have one or five, the same workspace should be available to all of them. 
  in fact, even if no virtual machines are running, the workspace should 
be available because I am going to do all of my backups from XP 
(unfortunately :-| ).

I've tried the built-in file sharing but it fails because permissions 
are always 600 and owned by root.  Those permissions and ownership are 
fraudulent because the VMWare file sharing code ignores permissions and 
ownership (because it can).  This screws me up because as I create 
Python modules in this common space, it installs them with the wrong 
user ID and permissions which makes it damn difficult for processes 
under different user IDs  to use.

I tried Samba but I could not get ubuntu to consistently (i.e. rarely) 
see the filesystem exporter from XP.  The filesystem navigator can see 
it and I could login etc. but I couldn't find or mount the Samba volume. 
  I'm also not comfortable that it will handle permissions correctly either.

I considered NFS but the Microsoft SFU has apparently reached 
end-of-life and appears not to be available anymore

I will admit a bit of dismay at my inability to accomplish should be a 
really simple thing.  Am I missing something?  How can I store vm ubuntu 
files on XP, maintain user and group ID, permissions etc. and still have 
the ability to back up from XP without a virtual machine running?

Am looking forward to your counsel.

---eric