Mist – How to Connect Mist to Ethereum-JS Testrpc

Move your ~/.ethereum wallet to a different location (if you already have one so as not to mess up your live stuff), take off the --datadir on your geth line, re-run everything, and it should work. ~/.ethereum is hard coded in Mist. (for now?)

https://github.com/ethereum/mist/blob/v0.3.8/modules/ipc/getIpcPath.js

module.exports = function() {
    var p = require('path');
    var path = global.path.HOME;

    if(process.platform === 'darwin')
        path += '/Library/Ethereum/geth.ipc';

    if(process.platform === 'freebsd' ||
       process.platform === 'linux' ||
       process.platform === 'sunos')
        path += '/.ethereum/geth.ipc';

    if(process.platform === 'win32')
        path = '\\\\.\\pipe\\geth.ipc';

    console.log('CONNECT to IPC PATH: '+ path);
    return path;
};

Alternatively, you can have just have the .ipc file in the right place that Mist is looking for it (specify an IPC file in the ~/.ethereum directory from geth and a datadir some other place), but to me this seems more complicated.

Well, I'm answering my own question, here's a solution:

1) Add endpoints to your Azure VM (tutorial)

In this case you need to add port 8545 to Inbound security group. Don't forget to add port 22 too, otherwise you can't connect via SSH.

2) Connect to VM and run geth --dev --rpc --rpcaddr "0.0.0.0". Last flag means that your RPC will accept requests from any IP.

3) Now you can run Ethereum wallet with RPC's flag -

mist.exe --rpc http://YOUR_VM_IP:8545

That's it :)