virtualbox.org

Hi,

I have windows 7 pro host with ubuntu server 12.10 as guest. The host has a static ip. The networking mode is NAT with port forwarding from host port 22 to guest port 22. I don't want to use use bridged networking because of company policies.

I need to ssh (port: 22) into the guest from the internet and I want to limit inbound connections to guest port 22 to certain ip addresses. So I enabled ufw in the guest and added rules to it. When I try to ssh into the guest from one of the allowed ip addresses, it's not connecting. If I disable ufw, it works.

What could be wrong? I don't know much about NAT and guest firewalls.

Thanks in advance for your response.

If you say that it works without ufw, then there is nothing wrong with Virtualbox, and this is the wrong place to post your issue.
We only support Virtualbox-related issues, so the best would be to post on a networking, linux or security forum.

I found the problem. The guest always receives the ip: 10.0.2.2 no matter who connects to it. I disabled firewall on the guest added the same ip restriction rules to the virtualbox entry in the host windows firewall and it worked. My question is if I install a web server in the guest, won't it be able to detect the actual ip address of the client who's connecting to it?

No you won't, that is how the NAT mode works: The virtualbox engine acts like a proxy, the host or the guest (or anything around them) will never know where it came from or to.