Unable to connect to MySQL VM from host

The MySQL server inside the VM is only bound to localhost( 127.0.0.1).

To connect from your desktop, you need it to listen on the bridged network interface, although the easiest way is to have it listen on all interfaces .

Modify yours /etc/mysql/my.cnf(or anywhere you can find my.cnf) to uncomment or add the following line:

bind-address = 0.0.0.0

in that [mysqld]section, so it looks like this:

...
[mysqld]
bind-address     = 0.0.0.0
...

If my.cnf is not found, the locations MySQL searches in Unix and Unix-like systems are:

File Name                Purpose
/etc/my.cnf              Global options
/etc/mysql/my.cnf        Global options
SYSCONFDIR/my.cnf        Global options
$MYSQL_HOME/my.cnf       Server-specific options (server only)
defaults-extra-file      The file specified with --defaults-extra-file, if any
~/.my.cnf                User-specific options
~/.mylogin.cnf           User-specific login path options (clients only)
DATADIR/mysqld-auto.cnf  System variables persisted with SET PERSIST or SE PERSIST_ONLY (server only)

Note that some distributions also assign their own location (eg /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf)

See https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/option-files.html for more information .