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Virtual Box

virtual box, vagrant, setting and networking

Enable SSH access to VM from remote

guide to let you use vm via SSH

Install ssh server on virtual machine

The machine you need to connect to should have ssh installed and enabled so that it can allow remotes to connect to it.

On ubuntu server or desktop

# install ssh
sudo apt install openssh-server

# view status
sudo systemctl status ssh

# Ubuntu ships with a firewall configuration tool called UFW
sudo ufw allow ssh

# get IP address, something like 10.0.2.15
ip a

Default SSH port is 22. So now your VM will listen too this port.

Configure Virtual Box Network

VirtualBox creates a Network Address Translation (NAT) adapter for VMs. This allows VM to access the internet but prevents other devices from accessing it via SSH. To configure the network, you need to use VirtualBox port forwarding on the default NAT adapter your VM is attached to.

Click on Virtual Machine > Settings > Network > Adapter 1 > Advanced > Port Forwarding. Next, Add a Port Forwarding Rule. Click on the Plus (+) icon under the Port Forwarding Rules page. Give your rule a meaningful name (for example "SSH port forwarding"). Use the default protocol i.e. TCP. The host IP will be 127.0.0.1 or simply localhost and use 2222 as the Host Port.

Name: SSH port forwarding
Protocol: TCP
Host IP: 127.0.0.1
Host Port: 2222
Guest IP: 10.0.2.15
Guest Port: 22

Finally, press the Ok button. You can read more in detail on enable network port forwarding on virtual box page.

Another option that work directly without port forwarding is by using "Bridged Network" as network on virtual machine. This gives VM an IP on same LAN network as your host is, so if your host is on 192.168.1.10 then VM may get 192.168.1.15.

Connecting from Remote

On remote to connect via ssh

ssh -p 2222 gues_vm_username@127.0.0.1

VM Web Server Access to Host

Similarly you can add another port-forwarding for 80:8080 to let website hosted on VM be accessed from your host.

Name: Web Server port forwarding
Protocol: TCP
Host IP: 127.0.0.1
Host Port: 8080
Guest IP: 10.0.2.15
Guest Port: 80

Access webhost using: 127.0.0.1:8080

How does port forwarding work?

When you do ssh on 127.0.0.1:2222 it is forwarded to 10.0.2.15:22 which lets the connection happen. Both IP are on separate network hence you cannot directly do user@10.0.2.15:22 directly from host.

Links

Command Line Control of Virtual Box

Ubuntu on Windows Virtual Box SSH

# Start Ubuntu
"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" startvm "ubuntu22" --type headless

# SSH from Host
ssh -p 2222 vaibhav@127.0.0.1

# Off Ubuntu
"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" controlvm "ubuntu22" poweroff

VM Jupyter access on Host

how to access jupyter on virtual box form your host

You should be able to do SSH to VM from host. Once SSHed, do

# In ubuntu or its shell
jupyter notebook --no-browser --port=9299

this starts jupyter in VM on localhost:9299. Now to access this from host:

# SSH from host and link another port
ssh -p 2222 -L 9299:localhost:9299 vaibhav@127.0.0.1

Here, The -L option is used to bind a port on the local machine with a remote port at the remote destination IP address. Format is ssh -L local_port:remote_destination:remote_port user@ssh_server

You can read more on SSH tunnels and access guide.

Vagrant

Vagrant is a CLI to create virtual box with all configurations in a file.

  • Install vagrant by downloading from site. It installs package with CLI.
  • Create following file in any folder, say ~/vagrant/vagrantfile:
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/xenial64"
  config.vm.network "private_network", ip: "192.168.33.10"
  config.vm.provider "virtualbox" do |vb|
    vb.memory = "1024"
  end
end
  • Then run vagrant up. On first run it will download and install ubuntu 16.04, 1GB, at 192.168.33.10. In subsequent run it will just start the VM.
  • do, vagrant ssh to ssh to new vm.
  • vagrant halt to stop a VM
  • DANGER ZONE: vagrant destroy to delete a VM
2025-01-12 Jul 2020