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1 September 2020

VirtualBox Remote Desktop Crazy Combo With Cut and Paste

by Jim Hall

I wanted to scribble down some notes on remote desktop (RDP) and VirtualBox using Microsoft Remote Desktop. When I got started I realized I had a really complex combination of Operating Systems, but it all worked seemlessly. Here is how I got it work, including a step needed to get cut-n-paste to work.

At a high level I wanted to connect to the console of a VirtualBox guest from my development machine and investigate if “cut and paste” was possible between the development machine and the guest console. Here is a simple diagram of the environment I wound up with:

┌──────────────────────────────────────┐                  ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                      │                  │                                      │
│   ┌────────────────────┐             │                  │   ┌────────────────────┐             │
│   │                    │             │                  │   │                    │             │
│   │   Solaris          │             │                  │   │   Microsoft        │             │
│   │   Vbox Guest       │             │                  │   │   Remote Desktop   │             │
│   │   (Bridged Mode)   │             │                  │   │                    │             │
│   │   IP: 10.0.0.72    │             │◀────WiFi Net────▶│   │                    │             │
│   │   Name: jimwin8    │             │                  │   │                    │             │
│   │                    │             │                  │   │                    │             │
│   └────────────────────┘             │                  │   └────────────────────┘             │
│                                      │                  │                                      │
│                                      │                  │                                      │
│       Win10 Host IP: 10.0.0.182      │                  │       MacOS (machine I type on)      │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘                  └──────────────────────────────────────┘

The reason why I have titled this post “Crazy Combo” is that I wound up with the following combination of products to meet my needs:

Rationale for this combination is as follows:

So with that, I got the gaming laptop working, and overtime I found it frustrating that when I needed console access to the guest I had to trundle over to the gaming laptop. Not being a regular Win 10 user compounded things (I find the Windows interface challenging). So I started investigating remote desktop clients for the Mac. Initially I went to the VirtualBox site but it does not list a client that can specifically work on a Mac. Doing some googling I stumbled upon the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client. Microsoft does not specifically talk about how to use it with VirtualBox but seems to position it as a generic RDP client. So I tried it and everything worked. Here is how I got it to work:

Step 1: Configure/Enable the guest to be a remote display

VirtualBox Remote Display
Image

Step 2: Enable Bi-Directional Cut and Paste

You can try to configure different combinations, for example for security reasons you may wish to not allow cut and past from the Solaris guest to the Mac, but allow data to flow the other way. I prefer information to flow both ways through the clipboard.

VirtualBox Cut and
Paste

Step 3: Configure Microsoft Remote Desktop Client

Microsoft Remote Desktop Config
Pane

And there you have it! I have cut and paste working on both Linux and Solaris. You have to be a little sensitive to the different desktop requirement for cut and paste. For example, to copy from the Mac Terminal and paste into the Solaris gnome-terminal, you need to command-C on the Mac Terminal and then click on the Solaris workspace and do the standard Solaris GNOME shift-control-v to paste.

Here is the a screenshot of the working environment:

My MacOS Desktop

categories: computing
tags: virtualbox - solaris - windows10 - macos