How to connect PocketPC to VMWare-WinXP?

["Ronald Castillo" <ronald_c1@hotmail.com>]

Hello!

I've been trying to connect my PocketPC through a wireless connection
(eth1) to a Windows XP system emulated under VMWare. The host PC has
Debian Sarge running kernel 2.6.12.2.

I've tried enabling iptables and using the rc.firewall script.
ActiveSync in Windows XP detects the pocketpc and shows "Connected", but
a moment later shows a warning: "Critical communication services failed
to start. Try resetting the mobile device, and then connect again".
Resetting the pocketpc didn't work, so I guess it's a routing problem in
the Debian host.

The problem might be that rc.firewall gives me sometimes the following
error messages:

---------------------
Loading simple rc.firewall version ..

 External Interface: vmnet1
 Internal Interface: eth1
 Second Internal Int:
 loading modules:  - Verifying that all kernel modules are ok
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ip_tables, ip_conntrack, ip_conntrack_ftp, ip_conntrack_irc,
iptable_nat, ip_nat_ftp,
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Done loading modules.

 Enabling forwarding..
 Enabling DynamicAddr..
 Clearing any existing rules and setting default policy..
 FWD: Allow all connections OUT and only existing and related ones IN
 FWD: Allow all connections OUT and only existing and related ones IN
Bad argument `state'
Try `iptables -h' or 'iptables --help' for more information.
Bad argument `vmnet1'
Try `iptables -h' or 'iptables --help' for more information.
 Enabling SNAT (MASQUERADE) functionality on vmnet1

rc.firewall-2.4 v done.
----------------------------

I read this happened because the script is designed for 2.4 kernels, so
I modified it by changing the -i lines with -m physdev.  After the
change, the script didn't return any error messages, but the emulated
WinXP didn't detect the PocketPC anymore.

Has anyone been able to achieve this kind of connection?  I'll be happy
to provide more information if necessary to try to solve this.

Thanks in advance for your help,

Ronald