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Oracle VirtualBox on Windows

Hi All,

Is there a way to start a vm headless (vboxheadless -s ) but one can close that command window or if I add that as a startup item will that make it run silent ?

I have successfully exported a appliance (linux vm), when I will do the batch import will it retain the settings I had configured originally or will one would have to assign bridged adapter, amount of ram, etc ?

will be grateful for your suggestions ! Kind Regards

EDIT : Iain, if one wants to script the GuestAdditions install on first boot in a CentOS VM, shall I just put the commands ./VBOXLinux-x86-additions.run to the bash script and it will run at startup, any thoughts on this would be really helpful.

Kind Regards

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Does the export also take care of hardware configurations? I thought there was post-changes that had to be done sometimes, but maybe I'm out of date with doing that. Or all I did was convert a drive format so they could be mounted in a different VM system, not actually run the OS from there. – Bart Silverstrim Oct 6 '10 at 12:47
There is some info here on scripting the GA install. I've never tried it though. – Iain♦ Oct 17 '10 at 21:45
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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

If you use 

vboxmanage import ovffile.ovf --dry-run

you will get a report telling you what configuration is going to be applied when the import is actually done. You'll also get advice on how to make changes if required.

As to running vboxheadless detached from a command line and a window it's not as straightforward as you may think. A simple

start /b vboxheadless -s vmname

appears to work in that it detaches from the command line but if you close the window the child process dies too and the 'power cord' is pulled from your vm.

To solve this use a small vbs script test.vbs

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
obj = WshShell.Run("c:\temp\test.bat", 0)
set WshShell = Nothing

My test.bat 

@echo off
vboxheadless -s vmname
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Yes, that's how to use it. You can change the name of the batch file, just edit the vbscript accordingly. – Iain♦ Oct 7 '10 at 15:46
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The keys will all be the same and so (in your environment) should work as you want. – Iain♦ Oct 8 '10 at 9:29
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If your system will shut down cleanly when sent the acpipowerbutton event is sent try vboxmanage controlvm VMName acpipowerbutton – Iain♦ Oct 14 '10 at 12:04
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`backtics are your friend` – Iain♦ Oct 14 '10 at 13:57
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I can only force that error message buy trying to talk to the machine when it's powered off - are you sure the machine is running ? – Iain♦ Oct 14 '10 at 19:09
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up vote 0 down vote

AFAIK when you import the applicance it will hold the settings you had on the machine you exported it from.

See if this post on the VirtualBox forum can help you.

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