[OpenIndiana-discuss] Running VirtualBox

[Jim Klimov]

2012-08-09 5:57, James C. McPherson пишет:
>> For most of the time you can use RDP consoles to VMs instead, but
>> yes GUI can be useful. Alternately, there are some Web-GUIs to
>> VirtualBox which essentially recreate the X11 GUI equivalent in
>> HTML (for general administrative tasks without need for X11), and
>> often include an RDP client to conveniently connect to consoles.
>
> If you're using bridged networking, then you can ssh in, or use
> xdmcp (if you set it up). The vboxheadless service is handy to have
> as well too. I've got it configured, but haven't needed to use it
> in quite a while since my use-cases changed.

Well, "console" access in VirtualBox - be it via RDP or local X11 -
is more like a KVM (Keyboard-Video-Mouse) redirection in an IPMI
BIOS for a server. You can access virtual BIOS, bootloader, kmdb
and other stages of non-OS, where guest-OS-hosted SSH or VNC or
X11 servers won't be accessible (or even running yet).

The VirtualBox GUI console mode is superior to RDP one in providing
a menu with controls to shutdown/pause/savestate the VM, to turn
on and off some components (CD/DVD redirection, networks, etc.)
IIRC same can be done via CLI, but less conveniently, or wrapped
in the third-party HTML consoles with I did not test extensively.

Also the GUI console allows for window integration of guest's
programs into your window manages so they seem like native
graphical-interfaced programs.

//Jim