7 Alternative front-ends; remote virtual machines
To start a virtual machine with VBoxSDL instead of the VirtualBox GUI, enter the following on a command line:
VBoxSDL --startvm <vm>
where <vm> is, as usual with VirtualBox command line parameters, the name or UUID of an existing virtual machine.
7.4 Remote virtual machines (VRDP support)
VirtualBox, the graphical user interface, has a built-in server for the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Protocol (VRDP). This allows you to see the output of a virtual machine’s window remotely on any other computer and control the virtual machine from there, as if the virtual machine was running locally.
VRDP is a backwards-compatible extension to Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Typically graphics updates and audio are sent from the remote machine to the client, while keyboard and mouse events are sent back. As a result, you can use any standard RDP client to control the remote VM.
With VirtualBox, the graphical user interface, the VRDP server is disabled by default, but can easily be enabled on a per-VM basis either in the “Display” settings (see chapter 3.5, Display settings, page 51) or with VBoxManage:
VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname> --vrdp on
If you use VBoxHeadless (described further below), VRDP support will be auto- matically enabled since VBoxHeadless has no other means of output.
