Setting up post forwarding for VirtualBox on Ubuntu 10.04

Post forwarding for VirtualBox is quite simple once you know what you do (as always ).

• Close the VirtualBox main window and shutdown all machines that are running. I found that VirtualBox overwrites the xml configuration files if you change them while it is still open.
• cd to your virtual machine’s directory (default should be: ~/.VirtualBox/Machines/Name\ of\ Virtual\ Machine)
• open the xml-File you find inside the directory, (your favorite editor should be the vi so enter:  vi Name\ of\ Virtual\ Machine.xml)
• Add the following lines in between the <ExtraData> Tags to forward ssh-Traffic from port 2222 on localhost to port 22 on the virtual machine:

 <ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/HostPort" value="2222"/>
<ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/GuestPort" value="22"/>
<ExtraDataItem name="VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/Protocol" value="TCP"/>

• Open VirtualBox and start your virtual machine.
• If VirtualBox complains about “Configuration error: Failed to get the “MAC” value (VERR_CFGM_VALUE_NOT_FOUND)” you have to change the network adapter your virtual machine is using. Go to Settings > Network > Advanced and change the network adapter to PCnet-FAST III.
• Start the machine, wait for bootup, you should now be able to “ssh -p 2222 localhost” to your virtual machine.
• Port forwarding for http and other services works similar.

I found the xml config on http://www.picxl.de/virtualbox-portforwarding. More info on networking in VirtualBox can be found on http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html

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