Rusty Razor Blade » virtual box

VirtualBox 4 – NAT Port Forwarding GUI

jon — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:27:27 +0000

Version 4.0 of VirtualBox will have NAT port forwarding available in an easy to use GUI. The more fervent readers of this blog will remember this post which I described how to set this up on the command line.

Open your VirtualBox networking settings, and click the port forwarding button.

Click the little plus on the right to add your settings. You can leave out the IP – it’s optional.

You used to have to shut down your VM to change these settings. With VirtualBox 4, they can be changed while it’s running. Awesome.

Setting up NAT Port Forwarding with VirtualBox

jon — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:47:30 +0000

I’ve typically used bridged networking with VirtualBox, but you can run into some issues. If you’re somewhere without internet access, or if you’re changing IPs often, you might be better off using NAT settings. There’s a few other advantages – for instance you won’t need to check the IP of your machine in order to connect to it over SSH. It’ll just work. Sweetness.

To get started, your VM must be shut down. As far as I can tell, it cannot be suspended either. Shut it off.

First, get a list of your VMS.

"WebServer" {2c61a180-e098-4926-b09a-27e431791c88} "Ubuntu" {01b85d8f-897a-412c-84b2-de285b34dd28}

Next, set up a port over 1024 that you’ll use to access your VM. I chose port 2222 to be SSH.

Check your settings

haddad:~ jhaddad$ VBoxManage showvminfo Ubuntu | grep NIC NIC 1: MAC: 080027AFA78E, Attachment: NAT, Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: 82540EM, Reported speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0 NIC 1 Settings: MTU: 0, Socket( send: 64, receive: 64), TCP Window( send:64, receive: 64) NIC 1 Rule(0): name = ssh, protocol = tcp, host ip = , host port = 2222, guest ip = , guest port = 22

The important thing here is the NIC 1 Rule – it’ll list your host port (2222) and your guest port that it maps to (22).

To connect, use the host port you defined, in this case 2222.

haddad:~ jhaddad$ ssh localhost -p 2222

If you’ve set up a web server, say on 8888, make sure you put that in your URL. It’ll map back to port 80 and you’ll be good to go.

Headless Virtual Box

jon — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:07:01 +0000

I like running VirtualBox headless on my Mac. It doesn’t show up in the Dock, and feels like it’s a remote server.

First, figure out which VMs you have on your machine.

haddad-work:~ jhaddad$ VBoxManage list vms
Oracle VM VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.2.6
(C) 2005-2010 Oracle Corporation
All rights reserved.

"WebServer" {2c61a180-e098-4926-b09a-27e431791c88}

Then start it using VBoxHeadless

nohup VBoxHeadless -s WebServer -vrdp on  &

I’m using Cord for RDP.

Open up Cord. If you’re using the default settings, you can just go to quick connect and type “localhost”. You’ll see your VM booting.

VirtualBox Guest Additions – Redhat / CentOS

jon — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:49:24 +0000

Mount VirtualBox Additions disk through the VirtualBox UI.

yum install -y gcc kernel-devel-`uname -r`
mkdir /mnt/cdrom
mount -o ro -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
sh /mnt/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions-amd64.run

Info found on tuxtraining.com

Using Kickstart to Automate CentOS VM Creation

jon — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:54:43 +0000

I’ve done this using CentOS, but I’m pretty sure the same thing will work with RedHat the exact same way.

Virtualization is now a commodity with several free tools available from Sun, VMWare and Xen. If you’re like me, you like to create a new, clean VM for each experiment. However, this comes with a drawback – the installation process, choosing your timezone, putting in the same password every time, etc… takes a while.

Fortunately, CentOS provides the means to automate the process via a kickstart file. The best part is, after you do an install, you’ll have a kickstart file to start working with – it’ll save all your options in /root/anaconda-ks.cfg. You can edit this file later to include other packages that you’d like to install, such as the GCC c++ libraries. You can also run other commands through yum, and customize the system-wide bashrc.

I’m only going to go over how I did the install – for the full details check out the CentOS kickstart guide

I’ve created a minimal kickstart file to do a base install without gnome, printing, and any tools I don’t find useful. I’ve disabled X completely – I have no need to boot to a GUI. I’ve also uncommented the lines to configure the drive settings, so I won’t be prompted for anything along the way; my VM should be completely ready to go once I reboot after the installation. Pretty awesome.

There’s a convenient way to run a kickstart file off a http connection, so I’ve put it the web server on my dev box. My dev box’s IP address is 192.168.1.5, and I copied the modified /root/anaconda-ds.cnf (which I’ve renamed to ks.cfg) to the server. At the installation boot prompt, I’d enter:

linux ks=http://192.168.1.5/ks.cfg

Then let it run. After a bit it’ll ready to reboot and be used. Just make sure to unmount the install DVD.

Obviously this has a lot more uses than just creating VMs, but I’m not a sysadmin, so I haven’t personally used it outside the desktop environment. There’s other tools for different distros, and third party tools for CentOS/RedHat.

For what I’ve done so far, one could argue it’s easier just to create an image of the VM and to just clone that whenever I want a new one. That’s a good solution if I was interested in always creating the same exact VM. However, using the kickstart method has several advantages. I could create a simple web app that generates new configs based on what I’ve checked off in a few lists, allowing me to quickly fire up new VMs with the right software for whatever I’m working on. I can also upgrade the version of the OS and run the same kickstart, so I don’t have to maintain some up to date starting image.

If I’ve made any mistakes, please don’t hesitate to point them out. I’m by no means a guru on the subject, I’ve just wanted to look into this topic for a while.

Some Other Useful resources

VirtualBox – SSH’ing into a VM from an outside machine

jon — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:43:50 +0000

Note: The terminology used below also applies to VMWare. The screens are different, but the issue and the solution are the same.

When creating a new VM through VirtualBox, you might have a problem SSH’ing into the box. You also might notice you get a 10.0.x.xx type address, even though the rest of your network is a 192.168.xx.xxx deal. Yes, the two are related.

Essentially what’s happening is the VM is sitting on it’s on little private line, where it can go out but nothing can reach it. By default, the network setting is “NAT”. If we want the VM to be accessible to the outside, we want to use Bridged networking.

This is easily solved, but requires that the VM be shut down. Go to the network second, pick an unused adapter (likely the 2nd one), enable it, and choose Bridged.

You should see this under the VM description now.

Go ahead and boot back into your VM. Fire up a terminal, run /sbin/ifconfig, and you’ll see you now have an ethernet adapter with an address you can reach.

Enjoy!