I'm running VirtualBox headless server on an Ubuntu 64 bit host, and I want to use it remotely. However, I'm having problems connecting via RDP. The DNS names in my network show the host to be 'server', and the guest to be 'ubuntu-vm'.

From the official documentation, I gather that I am to connect to server on the default RDP port in order to see the guest machine. I start the virtual machine like so:

vboxheadless -startvm My_VM

Then I connect on my laptop, and I get...

rdesktop -a 16 server
ERROR: server: unable to connect

So next I consult the documentation further, and I find there are RDP flags that can be turned on (but should be on implicitly for a headless server). So I pull up information using 'vboxmanage showvminfo My_VM', and I find the VRDP property is off.

VRDP Connection:    not active

To make things even weirder, RDP flag seems to be missing from vboxmanage. I've installed straight from the ubuntu repo's using the virutalbox-ose package, not sure how that measures up against the official docs.

For instance, this command doesn't exist:

VBoxManage modifyvm My_VM --vrdp on

From the UI, the VM's Settings regarding Display have greyed out the 'remote Display' option.

What I'm looking for is advice :). I'm open to suggestions that don't involve starting again with something like VMWare.

Thanks in advance!