How can I get the Bridged IP address of a VirtualBox VM running in headless mode?

Question

I have VirtualBox set up on a server. It was set up as a Bridged VM, and has an IP address. It's now running in headless mode, started with "VBoxHeadless -s PuppetMaster".

How can I find out what IP the VM is using VBoxManage?

Answer 1

I could find my Headless VB with the combination of following commands:

# Update arp table
for i in {1..254}; do ping -c 1 192.168.178.$i & done

# Find vm name
VBoxManage list runningvms

# Find MAC: subsitute vmname with your vm's name
VBoxManage showvminfo vmname

# Find IP: substitute vname-mac-addr with your vm's mac address in ':' notation
arp -a | grep vmname-mac-addr

But even easier: in linux, you can connect to the VB:

# Default VirtualBox Listening Port: 3389
rdesktop -N hostingserver:3389

This command will open a shell window, and you'll have direct access to the Headless VB, where you can retrieve your Headless VB IP: ip addr

Answer 2

Install guest additions and (assuming linux is the guest) you can run the following:

VBoxManage --nologo guestcontrol yourVirtualMachineName execute --image "/sbin/ifconfig"  --username yourUser --password yourPassword --wait-exit --wait-stdout -- -a

Answer 3

VBoxManage guestproperty enumerate {`VBoxManage list runningvms | awk -F"{" '{print $2}'` | grep IP | awk -F"," '{print $2}' | awk '{print $2}'

Answer 4

You can get it directly using this command:

VBoxManage list bridgedifs

Answer 5

Not sure if VBoxManage can give you that information directly. What you can do is run the following command to see the network card configuration.

VBoxManage showvminfo PuppetMaster | egrep ^NIC

That will if nothing else will provide you with the MAC address, allowing you to find out the actual ip address by other means.

Answer 6

From virtualbox.org forum --

VBoxManage guestproperty get <vm-name> "/VirtualBox/GuestInfo/Net/0/V4/IP" | cut -f2 -d " "