Remove settings

Why do you want to do this? So you can create a Virtual server that you are going to do some work with, which you might perhaps use when snapshotting different build states of that server or your code; and you want to access it as though it were any other web server. That means using ssh to login, change your files, and viewing the web server in your local browser. The example here is based on experience of Ubuntu Linux, and was tested on both 10.04 (32 bit), and 10.10 (64 bit) using VirtualBox V4.0.4 r70112.

1) Install the server that you want to the VBox virtual machine in the usual way. Note the name you have given to VirtualBox for that machine (we’ll call that <virtualmachinename>), that is the name in the left hand machine listing in the VirtualBox Manager window.

2) Run the virtual server and make sure it is running ssh and your web server. (If you have a clean install of a LAMP server you might not have installed openssh, so do this the usual way i.e. EITHER # apt-get install ssh OR $ sudo apt-get install ssh, depending how you are logged in, what flavour of Linux, etc).

3) Close the virtual server and look in the log for VirtualBox – you need to find out how VBox ‘sees’ the network adaptor. On an Ubuntu Linux machine the VBox log will be in /home/<yourname>/.VirtualBox/Machines/<yourmachinename>/Logs/VBox.log. Open this log file in a text editor and search for a block of text that refers to the network adaptor, a block that looks like this:

00:00:01.043   [/Devices/<adaptername>/0/Config/] (level 4)

00:00:01.043   AdapterType    <integer> = 0×0000000000000000 (0)

00:00:01.043   CableConnected <integer> = 0×0000000000000001 (1)

00:00:01.043   LineSpeed      <integer> = 0×0000000000000000 (0)

00:00:01.043   MAC            <bytes>   = “09 0E 28 74 36 52″ (cb=6)

You are basically looking for the network adaptor name field (<adaptername>). The text around that also details the MAC address of that adaptor, so you know it’s the right name you have found. In our machines from the example above the network adaptor was called ‘e1000′; yours might be called ‘pcnet’ or something else. We need to know that for the VBox configuration changes, so take note of <adaptername>.

4) Now it’s time to tell VirtualBox about the ssh changes. You do this by running a set of three VBoxManage commands from the command line, like this:

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/HostPort” 2222

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/GuestPort” 22

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/Protocol” TCP

Replace the <virtualmachinename> with the name of the server you saw earlier in VirtualBox. You will need quotes to enclose that name IF there are spaces in that name (we had a machine called “Ubuntu 10.04 LTS” and so we had to use quotes to enclose that name).

Note that what these commands do is map the virtual machine listener for ssh on port 22 to a localhost port which is, in this case, 2222. (Port selection and checking is a whole different topic which you can find out about elsewhere – we assume here that port 2222 is already free).

Check that the commands are understood by VirtualBox by using this from the command line. Once again, use the name of the virtualmachine with quotes if necessary:

$ VBoxManage getextradata <virtualmachinename> enumerate

The output of this should include some text like this:

Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/GuestPort, Value: 22

Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/HostPort, Value: 2222

Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/Protocol, Value: TCP

If that is correct, you are 90% completed now!

5) Test ssh.

Firstly, close the virtual machine if you haven’t already done so. Restart it, and from your local machine (i.e. not from inside the virtual machine!) run this command:

$ ssh -l <username> -p 2222 localhost

Replace the <username> field with your login for the virtual machine. You should get the prompts associated with the ssh login to any remote server. Once you have done this, you can map the local server’s file system using the normal means – for example in Ubuntu use “Places – Connect to server…” and connect as normal except to localhost on port 2222. Now you can see and amend files that are in the virtual machine.

6) Set up web server access

This is the same sort of procedure you used for ssh, except we’re going to map local port 8888 to the virtual server’s web port 80:

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/web/HostPort” 8888

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/web/GuestPort” 80

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/<adaptername>/0/LUN#0/Config/web/Protocol” TCP

Check from the command line with:

$ VBoxManage getextradata <virtualmachinename> enumerate

Where you should see some text like:

Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/web/GuestPort, Value: 80

Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/web/HostPort, Value: 8888

Key: VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/web/Protocol, Value: TCP

7) Access virtual web server

Go to your web browser and enter:

http://localhost:8888

You should now see the index page for the virtual server. All done – you can now ssh into the virtual machine server, change files, and test your changes using the local browser.

Remove settings

Once you are done and you wish to reverse these change, you can remove the values inserted by running the same commands without an argument:

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/HostPort”

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/GuestPort”

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/Protocol”

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/web/HostPort”

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/web/GuestPort”

$ VBoxManage setextradata <virtualmachinename> “VBoxInternal/Devices/e1000/0/LUN#0/Config/web/Protocol”

Now when you run this line the ‘Key’ values will have gone:

$ VBoxManage getextradata <virtualmachinename> enumerate

The fact that it has come as a shock to people, must only be people who have never used the service as it was always plainly apparent that Spinvox were using the mechanical turk to achieve a lot of their message transactions. This makes me laugh much like the uproar a few years ago when it was “revealed” that the dictionary corner on Countdown were getting assistance from other people in the studio team! I am fairly sure Goldman Sachs and Spinvoxes other investors would have been able to do simple calculations as to whether the amount of people needed to transcribe the messages to text was above the break even point and therefore the business could scale.

For all the bad press it has received today, the simple fact is that they had an innovative service people were willing to pay for – unlike Twitter, Facebook etc which are struggling to find meaningful revenue streams from their user base. They have however misled the press and potential customers as to the power of their D2 technology and maybe this is why people feel their expectations have been betrayed.