[GRLUG] Starting virtualbox remotely

[L. V. Lammert]

On Sun, 21 Oct 2012, Topher wrote:

> I have a win7 vm on my desktop.  I want to be able to ssh home, start it
> up, and then VNC into it.  I've never messed with headless, is that what
> I want?  I was thinking that I would need to start it normally on that
> xserver, and then vnc to it.
>
> So, question one, is headless what I want?
>
Technically, VBox is *only* headless - you have no connection to the VM
desktop until you launch one via RDP (preferred), VNC, or one of the
admin tools..

What you want is either vboxtool (shell script), or phpVirtualBox (a web
GUI for VB). First requirement - create a separate vbox user that will
"own" the VMs, as VB hides it's config under the user directory no matter
where you store the physical machine diks.

We have migrated to a simpler approach with SuSE/Xen - it is integrated at
the system level and comes built-in shell management, no need to fuss with
userspace. It also provides an OpenStack migration path.

	Lee