[CentOS] headless VirtualBox on Centos

Greg Bailey
Fri, 27 Mar 2015 03:50:39 -0000

On 03/26/2015 07:33 PM, Boris Epstein wrote:
> Hello listmates,
>
> I am wondering if there is a set of scripts/utilities for automatically
> starting and running headless (no X11) VM's using VirtualBox omn a
CentOS 6
> server. VNC/RDP access to the VM's would be fine.
>
> Any help much appreciated.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Boris.

Hi Boris,

The command you want is "vboxmanage"

Usually I'll start a VM in the usual way (using the GUI), configure
networking, and then shut it down.

Then, to start it headless (assuming the VM is named "mytestvm1"):

vboxmanage startvm mytestvm1 --type headless

Other commands that I find useful:

vboxmanage list vms
(show all the VMs defined)

vboxmanage list runningvms
(show the VMs that are running)

There's lots of other subcommands for changing configuration, etc.
Typing just "vboxmanage" will show quite a bit of usage information.
You
can use "vboxmanage controlvm ..." to enable/disable RDP, for example.

-Greg