Nifty Virtualbox Commands

TL;DR

Here are some nifty VirtualBox commands I just want to have for reference 😇

List the VirtualBoxes on your machine:

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vboxmanage list vms

Start your VirtualBox in headless mode (i.e. no UI):

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vboxmanage startvm <vmname> --type headless

List all of your running VirtualBoxes:

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vboxmanage list runningvms

List the IP address of the VirtualBox:

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vboxmanage guestproperty enumerate <vmname> --patterns *V4/IP*

The Rest of the Story

Do you have a desktop or laptop that you use for running VirtualBoxes? I’m not talking about a virtual machine server, just a beefed-up PC that runs some of your VirtualBoxes. And what happens if you are remote, and all you can do is SSH into that PC, how do you start your VirtualBoxes?

Well, if this sounds familiar, here are some nifty commands to start up your VirtualBoxes remotely.

I am assuming that you have connected to a remote PC using something like Secure Shell Protocol (SSH). You can run these commands locally as well, but my use case is with a remote PC.

I am also assuming that your VirtualBox, the one you want to start up remotely, has remote-connection software set up on it as well. Maybe SSH, or if it is a Windows VirtualBox, then Remote Desktop (RDP).

For starters, I can never seem to remember all the names of my VirtualBoxes, so let’s begin by listing the VirtualBoxes on our machine:

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vboxmanage list vms

You should then see the VirtualBox names listed:

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"Linux-Mint-20-VirtualBox" {u1ea45f9-u1c5-abce-a55c-u82u46a570ae}
"Von-Awesome-VirtualBox" {5ceuc4b0c-1p58-d76b-98t3-i5uh713q4742}

Next you’ll want to start one of your VirtualBoxes. To do that, run this command:

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vboxmanage startvm <vmname> --type headless

It is important to use --type headless here, otherwise the VirtualBox will not start unless you have the VirtualBox GUI running.

Using my list of VirtualBoxes, my command would look like this:

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vboxmanage startvm Linux-Mint-20-VirtualBox --type headless

Thirdly, you can use this command to see if the VirtualBox is running:

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vboxmanage list runningvms

If you have a static IP address assigned to your VirtualBox, you can skip this. But if you do not, this command will list the IP address of the VirtualBox:

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vboxmanage guestproperty enumerate <vmname> --patterns *V4/IP*

Again, using my VirtualBox’s name, the command would be:

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vboxmanage guestproperty enumerate Linux-Mint-20-VirtualBox --patterns *V4/IP*

And the results, will look something like this:

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Name: /VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP, value: 10.0.0.125, timestamp: 1420424562652432112, flags:

Conclusion

You should now be able to connect to your remotely-started VirtualBox.

End of Line.