[GRLUG] Starting virtualbox remotely

[Ben Rousch]

You can do it by sshing to the user that owns the virtual machines and then:
$ vboxmanage startvm mywinxpvm --type headless

Then, assuming you already have a VNC server running on Windows in the
virtual machine, you forward port 5900 from that VM through your
firewall and connect remotely to it via VNC. Keep in mind that is an
unecrypted VNC connection, so it's not ideal. To encrypt it, you
connect port 5900 on the VM to a port on your Linux desktop, then ssh
tunnel that to your remote computer.

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 11:48 AM, L. V. Lammert <lvl at omnitec.net> wrote:
> 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
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-- 
 Ben Rousch
   brousch at gmail.com
   http://clusterbleep.net/