<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000'>We've been running Windows 2003 Server guests on Xen for at least 4 years now., no problems.<br><br><br>Regards,<br>Scott<br><br><br><hr id="zwchr"><b>From: </b>"Don Ellis" <don.ellis@gmail.com><br><b>To: </b>"Mailing List for LUG in greater Grand Rapids, MI area." <grlug@grlug.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Sunday, October 21, 2012 4:05:05 PM<br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [GRLUG] Starting virtualbox remotely<br><br>One thing not mentioned is using the -X switch when connecting ssh (X has to be available on the remote machine). Would this be sufficient for the VNC session to be encrypted (as Ben describes)?<div><br></div><div>Lee, check on the Xen server -- last time I looked, I got the impression that Windows was not supported as a guest. Maybe I need to check later documentation...</div>
<div><br></div><div><div>In VBox, port 3390 is the default for RDP; you can set a different port in the GUI or command line, but you have to turn on the RDP server for any VM you want to use (default is off). Later versions show setting a range of ports, and an unused one is assigned by VBox.<br>
<br>Also, I would use vboxtool AND phpVirtualBox -- vboxtool starts VMs headless without user intervention and phpVB makes the RDP connections easily available (and gives GUI management for all VB settings). If you just need to connect without VNC or RDP (or are ok with manual/direct RDP connections), you can ssh directly to the VM once it's started. phpVB is where I saw a range of RDP ports being assigned. Of course, you need to be able to discover the IP address of the VM to ssh into it, and I haven't found an easy way to do that other than to assign something manually, either with DHCP/DNS or just RDPing into the VM and asking what the IP is.</div>
<div><br></div><div>At any rate, using the VBox GUI is pretty much required to set up initial settings and [for example] upgrade the VBox version, although you can do that remotely by starting VBox in an X session (ssh -X into the remote box, then say 'virtualbox' on the command line). However, I have found times that trying to do VBox GUI upgrades remotely can lead to some problems, and it seems easier/more reliable to do it on a physical console on the VBox host.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Any clarification on VBox, I have a lot of answers (too many?).</div><div><br></div><div>Bottom line is, VBox has been running pretty well for a simple setup, with just a few kinks that may be easy to fix once the answers are known (I may have some of them down). I still need more practice with Xen.</div>
<div><br></div><div>--Don Ellis</div><div><br><div><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Ben Rousch <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brousch@gmail.com" target="_blank">brousch@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">You can do it by sshing to the user that owns the virtual machines and then:<br>
$ vboxmanage startvm mywinxpvm --type headless<br>
<br>
Then, assuming you already have a VNC server running on Windows in the<br>
virtual machine, you forward port 5900 from that VM through your<br>
firewall and connect remotely to it via VNC. Keep in mind that is an<br>
unecrypted VNC connection, so it's not ideal. To encrypt it, you<br>
connect port 5900 on the VM to a port on your Linux desktop, then ssh<br>
tunnel that to your remote computer.<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 11:48 AM, L. V. Lammert <<a href="mailto:lvl@omnitec.net" target="_blank">lvl@omnitec.net</a>> wrote:<br>
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2012, Topher wrote:<br>
><br>
>> I have a win7 vm on my desktop. I want to be able to ssh home, start it<br>
>> up, and then VNC into it. I've never messed with headless, is that what<br>
>> I want? I was thinking that I would need to start it normally on that<br>
>> xserver, and then vnc to it.<br>
>><br>
>> So, question one, is headless what I want?<br>
>><br>
> Technically, VBox is *only* headless - you have no connection to the VM<br>
> desktop until you launch one via RDP (preferred), VNC, or one of the<br>
> admin tools..<br>
><br>
> What you want is either vboxtool (shell script), or phpVirtualBox (a web<br>
> GUI for VB). First requirement - create a separate vbox user that will<br>
> "own" the VMs, as VB hides it's config under the user directory no matter<br>
> where you store the physical machine diks.<br>
><br>
> We have migrated to a simpler approach with SuSE/Xen - it is integrated at<br>
> the system level and comes built-in shell management, no need to fuss with<br>
> userspace. It also provides an OpenStack migration path.<br></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div>
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