proggR Posted September 13, 2009 Share Posted September 13, 2009 I've just installed debian as a VM on my desktop and I'm going to be using it as a practice virtual host. I need to figure out how to route network traffic to it from other computers on the network and view pages from its web server in the other computer's browsers. Debian is running in VirtualBox on my OSX computer. The desktop is wireless to the router and the other computers in the house are a mixture of wired and wireless connections to the same router. I would like to setup a DNS on the desktop but I don't know if it'd have to be in OSX or in the Debian VM (I'm assuming in OSX). Once I'm able to access the VM through the browser and remote into it, I'd also like to remotely create a second virtual machine on the desktop from another computer on the network. After that I may register with DynDNS and see if I can access the whole setup from another location. Any help or direction would be great. I've never setup a network like this before so it'll mostly be new to me. Thanks in advance for any help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 13, 2009 Share Posted September 13, 2009 It really all depends on how you set up the networking in the VM. As far as outside computers will be able to tell, if the VM has its own IP address, it will seem like a separate system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zq29 Posted September 13, 2009 Share Posted September 13, 2009 Your VM's should be assigned their own IP addresses, just type their IP address into a browser on another machine and you should reach it's web server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proggR Posted September 13, 2009 Author Share Posted September 13, 2009 It has an IP but its not a normal one from the router. It lists the router as the DNS server but instead of a 192.168.x.x it gives 10.0.x.x for its IP address. When I type it in the browser of another computer it times out. I'll check the router configuration to see if I have to change anything there. Is it possible to setup a name server to access it without the IP address. Like I could type debian/file.html in the browser of another computer on the network and it would know debian is the name of the VM? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 13, 2009 Share Posted September 13, 2009 Hrmmm, with Windows computers you can do that (for example, I can type in CORBIN1, and it knows the IP of this computer), but I think that's some protocol (that has something to do with "Network Awareness" or some shit) that only Windows computers do. (Because, for example, this computer does not know the IP of my Fedora Core computer based off of its host name.) One possibility would be to have a DNS server, but it might not be worth the effort of running that just to be able to use host names. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proggR Posted September 13, 2009 Author Share Posted September 13, 2009 I wouldn't mind setting one up because I would like to have a few VMs running and let some of my housemates access them to host files and test code for our classes. It would also give me some practice with administrating a very small vps, which is what I'd like to do in the future. I'll be reading more into it. I also noticed there's a 32 way routing table in the router that i can type a name into and provide the ip address but I think that's for external destinations since the only option given is to connect through WAN. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 13, 2009 Share Posted September 13, 2009 Hrmmm... Well the issue you might run into is that you'll have to set that as the DNS server for every computer. That shouldn't be an issue though as long as the computer can respond to DNS requests fairly quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proggR Posted September 13, 2009 Author Share Posted September 13, 2009 I read that wrong at first but I think I get it now. There should be a way around that somehow. It would be similar to accessing file servers via //hostname from the run prompt while on an intranet. I could use SAMBA or something for that but I don't know how relevant that would be for running a small vps in the future. Running a DNS may be better for me to try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted September 13, 2009 Share Posted September 13, 2009 I had to setup and run my own DNS at home because I also run around 10-12 vps's and a small network of physical machines. I'd make another Debian vps and configure Bind on it, its pretty straight forward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proggR Posted September 14, 2009 Author Share Posted September 14, 2009 ok thanks. i'll look into that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corbin Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 I installed a Ubuntu VM a few hours ago because I was bored, and because this thread got me curious. Apparently configuring a VM to have its own LAN IP in VirtualBox is a bitch >.<. Finally clicked enough crap and it works now haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 I would use a Debian host along with OpenVZ if you have the hardware available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proggR Posted September 15, 2009 Author Share Posted September 15, 2009 I was originally going to run OpenBSD with Xen and then run a few Debian DomU's from there but I got lazy and the BSD install was continually displaying error messages over the prompt. I didn't read into it though. I wish I had another more recent computer to use as a server, other than the server I have. Its too huge to bring into my small room and I'm pretty sure the landlord panicked when he saw it because he pays for the power here. I'll keep trying to use VirtualBox and hope it works alright. There wouldn't be a way to run Xen in OSX would there? To somehow use OSX as the dom0? That would be a lot easier to do some things I assume. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trq Posted September 15, 2009 Share Posted September 15, 2009 You can't run OSX on any old hardware, so unless your server is of the right architecture, I'm not sure thats a good pathway either. Ive not had too much luck with BSD's in the past but giving up because of a few errors isn't the way to go. Did you try any Linux distro's? Debian should be a snap to install on pretty much any architecture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proggR Posted September 15, 2009 Author Share Posted September 15, 2009 I meant because I could use my desktop with OSX and Xen. It'd be new hardware and I'd just have the server running when I needed it. I may try to use Debian as both Dom0 and DomU on the server. I didn't give up per se, I moved within days of the install and haven't setup the server since. I probably can't because the router in the house it downstairs and the server would need an ethernet connection. I'd also need to setup a second router as a gateway because the router's already got all the ports filled. Ill see if I can share the network connection through my desktop. That may work I suppose. I'll probably continue to mess around with VirtualBox for now and then go back to the server when I'm more familiar with setting up a nameserver and capable of accessing the web server on the VMs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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