Hi everyone,

I just made a new virtualbox, attached hard disks and other stuff, the problem is, I'm doing it on server only with CLI and I can't seem to be able to connect to my new machine.

Can someone tell me is it possible to set an IP for damn machine that I can RDP to it from another computer?...

And no, this didn't help:
VBoxManage modifyvm $VM_name --vrde on --vrdeport 5012 --vrdeaddress preffered_ip

If you use RDP to connect to the machine you have to connect to the host, not the guest. You don't have to set an IP for the host beforehand.

I figured it out later, yes, I need to set a hosts IP, but it didn;t work yet. So the situation looks like this:

My interface [Machine on which I'm trying to run new VM]:

eth0.200:0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 50:e5:49:c6:b4:9b
inet addr:192.168.1.13 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

Reply from another local machine:

PING 192.168.1.13 (192.168.1.13) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.13: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.081 ms

So, the connection is established. It's just for check, I'm gonna try RDP from local machine, that reply was to check if connection is good.

So, what do I do, i set vrde ON like this with my hosts macine IP:

VBoxManage modifyvm webdev --vrde on --vrdeaddress 192.168.1.13

Then with showvminfo check further:

...
NIC 1: MAC: 080027A67F23, Attachment: Bridged Interface 'eth0.200', Cable connected: on, Trace: off (file: none), Type: 82540EM, Reported speed: 0 Mbps, Boot priority: 0, Promisc Policy: deny
...
VRDE: enabled (Address 192.168.1.13, Ports 3389, MultiConn: off, ReuseSingleConn: off, Authentication type: null)
Video redirection: disabled
...

Then, when I start VM i should be able to RDP to it, and that's what I get:


VBoxManage startvm webdev --type headless
Waiting for VM "webdev" to power on...
VM "webdev.svako.lt" has been successfully started.
timothy@Noriko ~ $ rdesktop -a 16 -N 192.168.1.13:3389
Autoselected keyboard map en-us
ERROR: 192.168.1.13: unable to connect
timothy@Noriko ~ $

So how come I can't connect to it?.. I feel like I'm missing something, on Virtualbox man pages chapter 7 I feel running in circles, it makes me thing i need to install some kind of VRDP package on host for vms, in that chapter is said:

"For maximum flexibility, starting with VirtualBox 4.0, VirtualBox implements remote machine display through a generic extension interface, the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE). The base open-source VirtualBox package only provides this interface, while implementations can be supplied by third parties with VirtualBox extension packages, which must be installed separately from the base package. See the section called “Installing VirtualBox and extension packs” for more information."

Than i click on a link where info about package should be, and that's what I find:

"VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP) support; see the section called “Remote display (VRDP support)”." - And that section link, links exactly back from where the link was suggested...

i feel lost and don;t know what to do, please help )

Do you have the Virtualbox extensions installed?
Assuming that you have the latest version of Virtualbox (4.2) you can download and install it with You need to be root to install the extension pack.

Hi, thnx for reply, my version is 4.0. something, so I found right package, and when I try to install it:

"VBoxManage: error: Failed to install "/root/data/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.16-75491.vbox-extpack": Extension pack 'Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack' is already installed. In case of a reinstallation, please uninstall it first"

So it appears the problem isn't the extra stuff package... what else could it be?

Sorry to quick reply, it seems i have version mismatch, my ext pack is version 4.2 when vb only 4.0, I'll try to fix this first then post the reply did it help or not

Yep, that was the problem, thank U for your help

So, if someone ever encounters this kind of problem (and probably will, because I've got mismatched extension together with vb without separate installation)

Check your VB version:

$VBoxManage -v
4.0.10_Debianr72436

Check extensions:


$VBoxManage list extpacks
Extension Packs: 1
Pack no. 0: Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack
Version: 4.2.0
Revision: 80737
Description: USB 2.0 Host Controller, VirtualBox RDP, PXE ROM with E1000 support.
VRDE Module: VBoxVRDP
Usable: false
Why unusable: VBoxExtPackRegister returned VERR_VERSION_MISMATCH, pReg=0000000000000000 ErrInfo='VirtualBox version mismatch - expected 4.2 got 4.0'


uninstall bad package:

$VBoxManage extpack uninstall 'Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack'

go here -> http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/ find your version of vb, in version folder find extension pack, copy its link and then wget it and install it:


$wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtu...6.vbox-extpack
$VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.10-72436.vbox-extpack

Reboot, and U'r ready to go

P.S. I probably need to mention it was on Debian distro

1 members found this post helpful.

Nice to hear that you figured it out and thanks for posting back the solution.