I've got VirtualBox on Ubuntu 16.04 as host and guests also. I have to manage guests (start, stop only) via SSH command line, but didn't find any working solution.
22 Answers
This can all be accomplished by using VBoxManage after you have established an ssh connection:
1. List your VMS:
First list your available Virtual Machines with the command VBoxManage list vms, I illustrate this on my own setup:
andrew@ilium~$ VBoxManage list vms
"Windows 8" {c4422acd-727b-45a0-9eef-65636bcde44d}
"Windows 10" {a8e262be-a032-4918-9085-63185318a979}
"Trusty Tahr Clean Copy" {c99bcf4b-9fea-4971-b190-425cb0b0cdeb}
"Xenial Xerus Clean Copy" {850122b9-c65f-425b-abb3-ffda68e159c6}
"Precise Pangolin Clean Copy" {169086e6-a3f4-42e7-8a89-63dcb273143f}
"Precise Pangolin Working Copy" {ff8312b6-cfae-4877-aa93-d71036d8882c}
"Xenial Xerus for MPlayer" {44902710-4368-4c06-9d24-3cb55328d31c}
"Xenial Xerus for vlc" {a62ad306-17d9-4ee3-8c1a-e4439c3b0e05}
"Xenial Xerus mingw64" {584d8513-6a16-49c7-b020-d657b93d5552}
"Trusty Tahr Working copy..." {433349e9-52eb-4066-bae7-623592871839}
"Xenial Xerus Working copy..." {dda23e74-cdb5-4c7d-8836-31be4129c02a}
andrew@ilium~$ Note: If you are unsure which VM is actually running you could use VBoxManage list runningvms instead...
2. Start a VM:
The VBoxManage command and options that you are after to start a Virtual Machine are these:
startvm <uuid|vmname>... [--type gui|sdl|headless|separate]So to start the "Trusty Tahr Clean Copy" VM in my example you would use:
VBoxManage startvm "Trusty Tahr Clean Copy" --type gui3. Stop a VM:
To stop the VM you would again use VBoxManage but this time with controlvm option:
controlvm <uuid|vmname> pause|resume|reset|poweroff|savestate|And in my example to close the "Trusty Tahr Clean Copy" VM the command would be:
VBoxManage controlvm "Trusty Tahr Clean Copy" savestateThis should all work nicely over ssh, who needs a gui after all :)
7For graceful shutdown use:
VBoxManage controlvm "Name" acpipowerbutton
