Replacing RDP with VNC for remote display

[lifeboy]

I'm running virtualbox-ose on a FreeBSD server and all is working nicely, except that I am not able to enter the command correctly to display the remote console of a guest via VNC.

I can issue the following form the command line: (I'm tunneling to the server via ssh)
c:\Users\Roland\Downloads\VNC-Viewer-6.0.1-Windows-64bit.exe localhost:5902

However, when I add the command to remotebox:
"c:\Users\Roland\Downloads\VNC-Viewer-6.0.1-Windows-64bit.exe" %h:%p

I get an error: "Bad Argument '&'.

Regardless of what I try, it always give the same error.

Is this a bug, or am I missing something in that string?

[Ian Chapman]

I haven't tested this but try the following and let me know the results.

c:\Users\Roland\Downloads\VNC-Viewer-6.0.1-Windows-64bit.exe localhost:5902 >nul

Couple of things to note, firstly the >nul at the end. Secondly, because you're tunnelling the display I don't believe you'll be able to use the %h and %p substitutions which is why I've hard coded localhost and port in the example. The reason being is that RemoteBox will replace %h with the name of the server (which obviously isn't called localhost) and the port that the RDP server (or in this case, maybe the VNC server) is listening on which may not necessarily be the same as the tunnelling port.

[Ian Chapman]

I should add, the %h substitution will work if you're also tunnelling the RemoteBox connection in the same manner and not just the display

[Martin]

Hello everybody.

Is there anybody who can tell me in detail how I must configure the
VirtualBox Webservice on a FreeBSD server to work with RemoteBox?    
I already have VirtualBox and Vboxwebserv installed on the FreeBSD server
and I also have RemoteBox installed and running on my Linux client.
But the vBox manual only explains more or less how to configure
Vboxwebserv on a Linux server and also on this site it is only explained
for several other Operating Systems. But unfortunalely not for FreeBSD.

So I would appreciate it very much if somebody could tell me exactly how
to do this?

Or if Lifeboy is still following this duscussion, could he please tell me
how he gott Vboxwebserv running on FreeBSD?

 I hope someone can help me with this

[lifeboy]

It's been a while, Martin, and I did solve the problem by using a different vnc client. I was at the time using Ubuntu to connect with Remotebox. I have since also had the need to install this on a windows box (aaargh!), and I've been mostly successful, except for this same problem that keeps coming up.

The solution on Ubuntu was to use a different VNC client. Now on windows I have RealVNC installed and I get the same error, so it's clearly related to VNC not getting some parameter that it wants and displaying the classic daft completely meaningless error.

I'm taking it to the RealVNC authors to if I can get some help there.

[lifeboy]

(duplicate)

[Ian Chapman]

Martin, assuming you're using the VirtualBox package from ports in FreeBSD, it might be a better question for the package author to see if they've provided any kind of service integration for the virtualbox web srv.

I haven't tried this, but maybe the simplest option is to just add something along the lines of:

su martin -c vboxwebsrv -H myipaddress -p 18083 -t0 &

to a script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ or the file /etc/rc.local

I haven't this test however, you may also need to use the full paths to binary.

[lifeboy]

Ian, I think you should supply us with the full detail of what is being send to the remote desktop client command line.

I have also tested this with TightVNC (as well as RealVNC) and both complain that the command is incorrect. Here's the TightVNC command:

"C:\Program Files\TightVNC\tvnviewer.exe" 192.168.0.6::5901 -password=""

As you can see, no parameters are being used. If I enter the command on the command line in Windows 10, the remote screen is displayed right away, without any other prompts. In remotebox, I get the message: Error in format of command line.

So clearly there are additional parameters being passed to the command which we don't know about.

[Ian Chapman]

Lifeboy, I think you should respond to my request for further information when originally trying to help with your problem, there's even a clue what the issue might be. Either way, you have the source code so it's hardly hidden.