Using SSH to connect to virtual box guest machine using IPv6 address

Question

I am using windows, and I'm also running an ubuntu server on virtual box. I've SSH'd into the guest machine countless times in the recent past when the guest machine was connected to a network using IPv4 addresses. This worked back when I was at home and at work. Right now, I'm connected to the university network. Here's the result from ifconfig when executed in my VM.

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:27:ae:e4:a0  
      inet6 addr: fe80::a00:27ff:feae:e4a0/64 Scope:Link
      UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
      RX packets:65404 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
      TX packets:43 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
      collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
      RX bytes:7588239 (7.5 MB)  TX bytes:10610 (10.6 KB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:1296 (1.2 KB)  TX bytes:1296 (1.2 KB)

I did some research, and found this post on SO. IPv6 link-local address format

So I ran netsh interface ipv6 show address on my host machine and this is my vbox network info

Interface 208: VirtualBox Host-Only Network

Addr Type  DAD State   Valid Life Pref. Life Address
---------  ----------- ---------- ---------- ------------------------
Other      Preferred     infinite   infinite fe80::f8cd:e410:b1b1:c081%208

I then tried pinging the address, and it was successful. I then tried to SSH into the server, using the following command

ssh -6 fe80::f8cd:e410:b1b1:c081%208

And I got this error

"no address associated with name"

I don't understand why I'm getting this error - I've ssh'd into machines by specifying their ipv4 addresses before, and I've never gotten this error before. Could anyone tell me what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks for the help!

The %20 is completely out of place there. Without knowing how it got there, it's hard to construct a valid address, but I guess it should probably be fe80::f8cd:e410:b1b1:c081. — tripleee
See the link that I added - It's supposedly the "scope zone". I've tried it without the scope zone and I get the same error. — Kira

superuser superuser · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-05T21:23:35

Try specifying the interface to the ssh client. however ssh does not have a switch for that, you have to use this syntax:

ipv6%eth1

fe80::f8cd:e410:b1b1:c081%eth0

Using SSH to connect to virtual box guest machine using IPv6 address

1 Answers