How to use Oracle VirtualBox' remote display feature?
Matthew Martinez
I can't use Oracle VirtualBox remote display feature.
I have host OS of Fedora 15 PAE. This OS is running Virtual Box with the same guest OS (Fedora 15). The network driver of virtual box is in bridge mode. Host OS is running Gnome 3, so as guest OS.
In this situation, I can see both machines separately from my windows 7 machine. I can SSH to them, I can VNC to them and I can RDP to them. All these features work with installed fedora software (ssh daemon, vncserver, x11vnc, xrdp etc).
But if I understand correctly, VirtualBox has it's own screen sharing for RDP protocol. Unfortunately, I can't use this feature.
I have set up remote display in Settings-Display-Remote Display tab of VirtualBox. I have set the port to 3390 not to interfere with already running rdp. I have set View-Enable Remote Display to "on" in the virtualbox window's menu.
Also I have opened port 3390 on both machines in firewall.
So now, how to connect to this display correctly? Should I connect to host's IP or to guest's? I think that it should be host's. But I can't connect to it with windows' rdp client...
43 Answers
You need to connect to the host rather than the guest. I would split the problem into two and suggest firstly you try and connect on your host to the guest with something like
rdesktop localhost 3390and see if you get a connection.
If that works, then go to your windows machine and connect with "Remote Desktop Connection" specifying the hostname and the connection separated by a colon(:)
so something like
myserver:3390If this still doesn't work, what sort of errors are you getting? Is the connection rejected or does it time out. Can you turn on logging on your firewall, or turn off the firewall altogether briefly to check its not a firewall problem.
First you need to make sure you have the VirtualBox Extension Pack installed. Get it from here:
Once this is installed, enable the virtual display for your VM. Now you need to connect with a rdp viewer to the host's ip address.
But if you are connecting to the local host then according to the virtualbox help documentation:
1When connecting to localhost in order to test the connection, the addresses localhost and 127.0.0.1 might not work using mstsc.exe. Instead, the address 127.0.0.2[:3389] has to be used.
Connect your VM via remote desktop:
rdesktop localhost:3389The setting is below: