Virtual Box and SSH

Question

I have a production server off site and a development server as a virtualbox on my laptop.

My question is how do I setup virtualbox's network before booting the image so that I can SSH between the two?

(Google has a lot on this subject but it is usually people asking how they can ssh between the host and the client)

Answer 1

You set the networking adapter into bridged mode (virtual box settings). That's all.

If you want to be able to access your development server from the production server, you need to port-forward port 22 to your development computer/virtal box IP.

To access the file system on the production server, you can use scp to copy files back and forth. I wouldn't recommend it however, it's a pain in the ass.

I would recommend you sshfs.

The way sshfs works is, it mounts the remote file system in your local filesystem. Then you just open, edit, save, copy/paste files there, and sshfs does the scp data-transmitting stuff in the background.

Command:

sshfs theUserYouWantToLoginAs@ip.of.target.computer:/ /path/to/folder/where/you/want/to/mount/the/remote/filesystem

example:

sshfs root@74.125.77.99:/ /mnt/sshfs

PS: I would use ssh keys, not a password. Passwords are too weak.

To generate a key:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

This generates id_rsa and id_rsa.pub
id_rsa.pub you echo into the authorized_keys file in the .ssh folder in the home directory of the ssh user on the target machine
example:

copy id_rsa.pub file to the target computer
cat ./id_rsa.pub >> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Answer 2

I found a way to ssh into the development server, but it wasn't with the command line so I don't know if this counts as an answer!

In my development (guest) OS, Cent OS, I can connect to my production server in the big wide world by going to:

Places > Connect to Server

and filling out the details as you would normally. (strangely when you select ssh it still asks you for the port you would like to use!?!)

Also. I don't know if this makes a difference but I entered the following into the host before booting the Cent OS image:

VBoxManage modifyvm "Cent OS 5.5" --natpf1 "guestssh,tcp,,22,,22"

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