[GRLUG] Starting virtualbox remotely

[Don Ellis]

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)?

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...

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.

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.

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.

Any clarification on VBox, I have a lot of answers (too many?).

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.

--Don Ellis


On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Ben Rousch <brousch at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
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