How can I ssh into a Virtual Box Windows 7 guest from a Linux host?

I've installed Cygwin on the guest and set up sshd. I can ssh localhost from within the guest.

The virtual machine is connected with a "NAT" adapter, and I've set up a port forwarding rule for the virtual machine that read as follows:

TCP 127.0.0.1 6666 10.0.2.15 22

but when I try to connect from the Linux host with:

$ ssh  -v -p 6666 bx@127.0.0.1
OpenSSH_6.6.1, OpenSSL 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to 127.0.0.1 [127.0.0.1] port 6666.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/pjmp/.ssh/id_rsa type 1
debug1: identity file /home/pjmp/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/pjmp/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/pjmp/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/pjmp/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/pjmp/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/pjmp/.ssh/id_ed25519 type -1
debug1: identity file /home/pjmp/.ssh/id_ed25519-cert type -1
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.6.1p1 Ubuntu-2ubuntu2.8

the command hangs with this output. What am I doing wrong?

PSkocik

Posted 2017-08-26T17:33:25.220

Reputation: 1 182

Answers

The NAT interfaces are pretty useless for anything beyond very simple internet connectivity in the virtual machine. Bridge the interface and get an addressable IP on the LAN, use a private interface, or a combination of NAT + one of the others.

TheCompWiz

Posted 2017-08-26T17:33:25.220

Reputation: 9 161

Thanks. Could you elaborate on that a little bit, please? If I change the Virtual Box network settings from "Attached to: NAT" to "Attached to: Bridged Adapter", the Port Forwarding button gets grayed out and the guest loses Internet connectivity, but nothing appears to be solved. – PSkocik – 2017-08-26T17:53:42.480

1Bridged, makes the interface behave like you plugged the VM directly into the network. You may need to renew the ip-address. Port-Forwarding is disabled, because you are no longer NAT'ing the connection... it will have it's own IP, and doesn't need NAT'ing. – TheCompWiz – 2017-08-26T17:59:27.093

I have found out that it does work fine the other way around so ssh from cygwin to the linux host. And so I am using that because it does not matter to me from which side I establish the connection.

Ondrej Popp

Posted 2017-08-26T17:33:25.220

Reputation: 1