Hi all,

This is an experiment, not for production. I'm prepared installing a Linux server on VM. Now I'm searching a solution to attach the static IP of the PC to VM so that the server can be browsed on Internet.

Say for example;
Public static IP of PC - 123.456.789.012
Internal IP of VM assigned by router - 192.168.0.10

Can any folk shed me some light? Pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Regards

This is the same as exposing a physical machine in your home network to the internet. The secret is port forwarding.

One way is turning the VM into a VPN server and programming your router to forward the VPN's port to the VM. Anybody on the internet who wants to access the VM needs a matching VPN client. This is good for security reasons.

Or perhaps you run a web server on the VM. Then, you can forward ports 80 and 443 to it, and anybody can access your VM. Which is questionable because not everybody has good intentions.

Or you forward port 22 for SSH access. In this case, disable password-based login.

Thanks for your advice. Since this is an experiment I prefer to do the easy way first.

I don't prefer programming my router because there are some other PCs on the local network.

On Internet searching I found below 2 documents;
How to setup a Virtual Machine VPN
https://torguard.net/blog/how-to-set...l-machine-vpn/

Using A VPN Inside A Virtual Machine For Extra Anonymity
https://greycoder.com/using-a-vpn-in...a-anonyminity/

Would they be relevant? Or any other documents to be suggested by you? Do I need to register a VPN account?

It sounds to me to be an easy setup. Security is NOT very important to me because this is an experiment for learning building a web server on VM. Any document to follow? Thanks

I did it years ago for remote accessing a VM. I already forgot how to do it. Any document for me to refer to? Thanks

Regards

I should have used the term "configuring" instead of "programming". Your router is configured to refuse any connection requests to your internet address 123.456.789.012. Without configuring port forwarding on your router, no traffic can reach your home network from the internet.

With VPN, I mean setting up your own VPN server on that VM. This means that you will register with your own VPN server, not with a public one. The two links you found describe public VPN services for reaching internet sites without revealing your IP address. They don't allow reaching your VM from the internet. To do the latter, you need something like OpenVPN; there are plenty of instructions for setting up and using an OpenVPN server.

Of course, in addition to setting up OpenVPN, you still need to configure port forwarding on the router.

To make your VM reachable via SSH, ensure that it has an SSH server (most Linux distros run it by default), set up key-based authentication, and configure port forwarding on the router.

To make your VM reachable via HTTP or HTTPS, you need a web server and port forwarding on the router. Since no authentication is involved, be ready for people with bad intentions breaking into your home network.

I would have to search the internet for instructions, and am sure you can do that as well.

Just to mention something I didn't see (or didn't read enough.)

There are a few ways to use networking on a VM. Bridged may be easier but even in NAT you'd need to also be sure to know of any port restrictions on client or host.

That's an additional complication we will tackle once the internet router question has been resolved.

Bridge Networking solves the problem making VM to connect Internet. But how to make Internet to connect VM? Remote access is a solution which I did years ago and I'm now digging the solution from my database. Browsing VM webserver on Internet is another question because VM is behind the router. Dynamic IP is even more complicate

I'm now reading following documents found on Internet

How to configure a LAMP stack on Ubuntu 20.04.
https://www.digitalocean.com/communi...n-ubuntu-20-04

How can I set up a Dynamic DNS fetching service on Ubuntu Server?
https://askubuntu.com/questions/7304...-ubuntu-server

Ubuntu as a home server. Part 1. Dynamic DNS.
https://www.outcoldman.com/en/archiv...1-dynamic-dns/

Regards