Table of Contents
As briefly mentioned in Section 1.16, “Alternative front-ends”, VBoxManage is the command-line interface to VirtualBox. With it, you can completely control VirtualBox from the command line of your host operating system. VBoxManage supports all the features that the graphical user interface gives you access to, but it supports a lot more than that. It exposes really all the features of the virtualization engine, even those that cannot (yet) be accessed from the GUI.
You will need to use the command line if you want to
use a different user interface than the main GUI (for example, VBoxSDL or the VBoxHeadless server);
control some of the more advanced and experimental configuration settings for a VM.
There are two main things to keep in mind when using
VBoxManage: First,
VBoxManage must always be used with a
specific "subcommand", such as "list" or "createvm" or "startvm". All the
subcommands that VBoxManage supports are
described in detail in Chapter 8, VBoxManage.
Second, most of these subcommands require that you specify a particular virtual machine after the subcommand. There are two ways you can do this:
You can specify the VM name, as it is shown in the VirtualBox GUI. Note that if that name contains spaces, then you must enclose the entire name in double quotes (as it is always required with command line arguments that contain spaces).
For example:
VBoxManage startvm "Windows XP"
You can specify the UUID, which is the internal unique identifier that VirtualBox uses to refer to the virtual machine. Assuming that the aforementioned VM called "Windows XP" has the UUID shown below, the following command has the same effect as the previous:
VBoxManage startvm 670e746d-abea-4ba6-ad02-2a3b043810a5
You can type VBoxManage list vms to
have all currently registered VMs listed with all their settings,
including their respective names and UUIDs.
Some typical examples of how to control VirtualBox from the command line are listed below:
To create a new virtual machine from the command line and
immediately register it with VirtualBox, use
VBoxManage createvm with the
--register option,[37] like this:
$ VBoxManage createvm --name "SUSE 10.2" --register VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 5.0.10 (C) 2005-2015 Oracle Corporation All rights reserved. Virtual machine 'SUSE 10.2' is created. UUID: c89fc351-8ec6-4f02-a048-57f4d25288e5 Settings file: '/home/username/.config/VirtualBox/Machines/SUSE 10.2/SUSE 10.2.xml'
As can be seen from the above output, a new virtual machine has been created with a new UUID and a new XML settings file.
To show the configuration of a particular VM, use
VBoxManage showvminfo; see Section 8.5, “VBoxManage showvminfo” for details and an example.
To change settings while a VM is powered off, use
VBoxManage modifyvm, e.g. as
follows:
VBoxManage modifyvm "Windows XP" --memory 512
For details, see Section 8.8, “VBoxManage modifyvm”.
To change the storage configuration (e.g. to add a storage
controller and then a virtual disk), use VBoxManage
storagectl and VBoxManage
storageattach; see Section 8.19, “VBoxManage storagectl” and Section 8.18, “VBoxManage storageattach” for details.
To control VM operation, use one of the following:
To start a VM that is currently powered off, use
VBoxManage startvm; see Section 8.12, “VBoxManage startvm” for details.
To pause or save a VM that is currently running or change
some of its settings, use VBoxManage
controlvm; see Section 8.13, “VBoxManage controlvm” for details.
When running VBoxManage without parameters or when supplying an
invalid command line, the below syntax diagram will be shown. Note that
the output will be slightly different depending on the host platform; when
in doubt, check the output of VBoxManage
for the commands available on your particular host.
Usage:
VBoxManage [<general option>] <command>
General Options:
[-v|--version] print version number and exit
[-q|--nologo] suppress the logo
[--settingspw <pw>] provide the settings password
[--settingspwfile <file>] provide a file containing the settings password
Commands:
list [--long|-l] vms|runningvms|ostypes|hostdvds|hostfloppies|
intnets|bridgedifs|hostonlyifs|natnets|dhcpservers|
hostinfo|hostcpuids|hddbackends|hdds|dvds|floppies|
usbhost|usbfilters|systemproperties|extpacks|
groups|webcams|screenshotformats
showvminfo <uuid|vmname> [--details]
[--machinereadable]
showvminfo <uuid|vmname> --log <idx>
registervm <filename>
unregistervm <uuid|vmname> [--delete]
createvm --name <name>
[--groups <group>, ...]
[--ostype <ostype>]
[--register]
[--basefolder <path>]
[--uuid <uuid>]
modifyvm <uuid|vmname>
[--name <name>]
[--groups <group>, ...]
[--description <desc>]
[--ostype <ostype>]
[--iconfile <filename>]
[--memory <memorysize in MB>]
[--pagefusion on|off]
[--vram <vramsize in MB>]
[--acpi on|off]
[--pciattach 03:04.0]
[--pciattach 03:04.0@02:01.0]
[--pcidetach 03:04.0]
[--ioapic on|off]
[--hpet on|off]
[--triplefaultreset on|off]
[--paravirtprovider none|default|legacy|minimal|
hyperv|kvm]
[--hwvirtex on|off]
[--nestedpaging on|off]
[--largepages on|off]
[--vtxvpid on|off]
[--vtxux on|off]
[--pae on|off]
[--longmode on|off]
[--cpuid-portability-level <0..3>
[--cpuidset <leaf> <eax> <ebx> <ecx> <edx>]
[--cpuidremove <leaf>]
[--cpuidremoveall]
[--hardwareuuid <uuid>]
[--cpus <number>]
[--cpuhotplug on|off]
[--plugcpu <id>]
[--unplugcpu <id>]
[--cpuexecutioncap <1-100>]
[--rtcuseutc on|off]
[--graphicscontroller none|vboxvga|vmsvga]
[--monitorcount <number>]
[--accelerate3d on|off]
[--accelerate2dvideo on|off]
[--firmware bios|efi|efi32|efi64]
[--chipset ich9|piix3]
[--bioslogofadein on|off]
[--bioslogofadeout on|off]
[--bioslogodisplaytime <msec>]
[--bioslogoimagepath <imagepath>]
[--biosbootmenu disabled|menuonly|messageandmenu]
[--biossystemtimeoffset <msec>]
[--biospxedebug on|off]
[--boot<1-4> none|floppy|dvd|disk|net>]
[--nic<1-N> none|null|nat|bridged|intnet|hostonly|
generic|natnetwork]
[--nictype<1-N> Am79C970A|Am79C973|
82540EM|82543GC|82545EM|
virtio]
[--cableconnected<1-N> on|off]
[--nictrace<1-N> on|off]
[--nictracefile<1-N> <filename>]
[--nicproperty<1-N> name=[value]]
[--nicspeed<1-N> <kbps>]
[--nicbootprio<1-N> <priority>]
[--nicpromisc<1-N> deny|allow-vms|allow-all]
[--nicbandwidthgroup<1-N> none|<name>]
[--bridgeadapter<1-N> none|<devicename>]
[--hostonlyadapter<1-N> none|<devicename>]
[--intnet<1-N> <network name>]
[--nat-network<1-N> <network name>]
[--nicgenericdrv<1-N> <driver>
[--natnet<1-N> <network>|default]
[--natsettings<1-N> [<mtu>],[<socksnd>],
[<sockrcv>],[<tcpsnd>],
[<tcprcv>]]
[--natpf<1-N> [<rulename>],tcp|udp,[<hostip>],
<hostport>,[<guestip>],<guestport>]
[--natpf<1-N> delete <rulename>]
[--nattftpprefix<1-N> <prefix>]
[--nattftpfile<1-N> <file>]
[--nattftpserver<1-N> <ip>]
[--natbindip<1-N> <ip>
[--natdnspassdomain<1-N> on|off]
[--natdnsproxy<1-N> on|off]
[--natdnshostresolver<1-N> on|off]
[--nataliasmode<1-N> default|[log],[proxyonly],
[sameports]]
[--macaddress<1-N> auto|<mac>]
[--mouse ps2|usb|usbtablet|usbmultitouch]
[--keyboard ps2|usb
[--uart<1-N> off|<I/O base> <IRQ>]
[--uartmode<1-N> disconnected|
server <pipe>|
client <pipe>|
tcpserver <port>|
tcpclient <hostname:port>|
file <file>|
<devicename>]
[--lpt<1-N> off|<I/O base> <IRQ>]
[--lptmode<1-N> <devicename>]
[--guestmemoryballoon <balloonsize in MB>]
[--audio none|null|dsound|solaudio|oss|alsa|pulse|
oss|pulse|coreaudio]
[--audiocontroller ac97|hda|sb16]
[--audiocodec stac9700|ad1980|stac9221|sb16]
[--clipboard disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost|
bidirectional]
[--draganddrop disabled|hosttoguest]
[--vrde on|off]
[--vrdeextpack default|<name>
[--vrdeproperty <name=[value]>]
[--vrdeport <hostport>]
[--vrdeaddress <hostip>]
[--vrdeauthtype null|external|guest]
[--vrdeauthlibrary default|<name>
[--vrdemulticon on|off]
[--vrdereusecon on|off]
[--vrdevideochannel on|off]
[--vrdevideochannelquality <percent>]
[--usb on|off]
[--usbehci on|off]
[--usbxhci on|off]
[--usbrename <oldname> <newname>]
[--snapshotfolder default|<path>]
[--teleporter on|off]
[--teleporterport <port>]
[--teleporteraddress <address|empty>
[--teleporterpassword <password>]
[--teleporterpasswordfile <file>|stdin]
[--tracing-enabled on|off]
[--tracing-config <config-string>]
[--tracing-allow-vm-access on|off]
[--usbcardreader on|off]
[--autostart-enabled on|off]
[--autostart-delay <seconds>]
[--videocap on|off]
[--videocapscreens all|<screen ID> [<screen ID> ...]]
[--videocapfile <filename>]
[--videocapres <width> <height>]
[--videocaprate <rate>]
[--videocapfps <fps>]
[--videocapmaxtime <ms>]
[--videocapmaxsize <MB>]
[--videocapopts <key=value> [<key=value> ...]]
[--defaultfrontend default|<name>]
clonevm <uuid|vmname>
[--snapshot <uuid>|<name>]
[--mode machine|machineandchildren|all]
[--options link|keepallmacs|keepnatmacs|
keepdisknames]
[--name <name>]
[--groups <group>, ...]
[--basefolder <basefolder>]
[--uuid <uuid>]
[--register]
import <ovfname/ovaname>
[--dry-run|-n]
[--options keepallmacs|keepnatmacs|importtovdi]
[more options]
(run with -n to have options displayed
for a particular OVF)
export <machines> --output|-o <name>.<ovf/ova>
[--legacy09|--ovf09|--ovf10|--ovf20]
[--manifest]
[--iso]
[--options manifest|iso|nomacs|nomacsbutnat]
[--vsys <number of virtual system>]
[--product <product name>]
[--producturl <product url>]
[--vendor <vendor name>]
[--vendorurl <vendor url>]
[--version <version info>]
[--description <description info>]
[--eula <license text>]
[--eulafile <filename>]
startvm <uuid|vmname>...
[--type gui|sdl|headless|separate]
controlvm <uuid|vmname>
pause|resume|reset|poweroff|savestate|
acpipowerbutton|acpisleepbutton|
keyboardputscancode <hex> [<hex> ...]|
setlinkstate<1-N> on|off |
nic<1-N> null|nat|bridged|intnet|hostonly|generic|
natnetwork [<devicename>] |
nictrace<1-N> on|off |
nictracefile<1-N> <filename> |
nicproperty<1-N> name=[value] |
nicpromisc<1-N> deny|allow-vms|allow-all |
natpf<1-N> [<rulename>],tcp|udp,[<hostip>],
<hostport>,[<guestip>],<guestport> |
natpf<1-N> delete <rulename> |
guestmemoryballoon <balloonsize in MB> |
usbattach <uuid>|<address>
[--capturefile <filename>] |
usbdetach <uuid>|<address> |
clipboard disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost|
bidirectional |
draganddrop disabled|hosttoguest |
vrde on|off |
vrdeport <port> |
vrdeproperty <name=[value]> |
vrdevideochannelquality <percent> |
setvideomodehint <xres> <yres> <bpp>
[[<display>] [<enabled:yes|no> |
[<xorigin> <yorigin>]]] |
screenshotpng <file> [display] |
videocap on|off |
videocapscreens all|none|<screen>,[<screen>...] |
videocapfile <file>
videocapres <width>x<height>
videocaprate <rate>
videocapfps <fps>
videocapmaxtime <ms>
videocapmaxsize <MB>
setcredentials <username>
--passwordfile <file> | <password>
<domain>
[--allowlocallogon <yes|no>] |
teleport --host <name> --port <port>
[--maxdowntime <msec>]
[--passwordfile <file> |
--password <password>] |
plugcpu <id> |
unplugcpu <id> |
cpuexecutioncap <1-100>
webcam <attach [path [settings]]> | <detach [path]> | <list>
addencpassword <id>
<password file>|-
[--removeonsuspend <yes|no>]
removeencpassword <id>
removeallencpasswords
discardstate <uuid|vmname>
adoptstate <uuid|vmname> <state_file>
snapshot <uuid|vmname>
take <name> [--description <desc>] [--live]
[--uniquename Number,Timestamp,Space,Force] |
delete <uuid|snapname> |
restore <uuid|snapname> |
restorecurrent |
edit <uuid|snapname>|--current
[--name <name>]
[--description <desc>] |
list [--details|--machinereadable]
showvminfo <uuid|snapname>
closemedium [disk|dvd|floppy] <uuid|filename>
[--delete]
storageattach <uuid|vmname>
--storagectl <name>
[--port <number>]
[--device <number>]
[--type dvddrive|hdd|fdd]
[--medium none|emptydrive|additions|
<uuid|filename>|host:<drive>|iscsi]
[--mtype normal|writethrough|immutable|shareable|
readonly|multiattach]
[--comment <text>]
[--setuuid <uuid>]
[--setparentuuid <uuid>]
[--passthrough on|off]
[--tempeject on|off]
[--nonrotational on|off]
[--discard on|off]
[--hotpluggable on|off]
[--bandwidthgroup <name>]
[--forceunmount]
[--server <name>|<ip>]
[--target <target>]
[--tport <port>]
[--lun <lun>]
[--encodedlun <lun>]
[--username <username>]
[--password <password>]
[--initiator <initiator>]
[--intnet]
storagectl <uuid|vmname>
--name <name>
[--add ide|sata|scsi|floppy|sas]
[--controller LSILogic|LSILogicSAS|BusLogic|
IntelAHCI|PIIX3|PIIX4|ICH6|I82078]
[--portcount <1-n>]
[--hostiocache on|off]
[--bootable on|off]
[--rename <name>]
[--remove]
bandwidthctl <uuid|vmname>
add <name> --type disk|network
--limit <megabytes per second>[k|m|g|K|M|G] |
set <name>
--limit <megabytes per second>[k|m|g|K|M|G] |
remove <name> |
list [--machinereadable]
(limit units: k=kilobit, m=megabit, g=gigabit,
K=kilobyte, M=megabyte, G=gigabyte)
showmediuminfo [disk|dvd|floppy] <uuid|filename>
createmedium [disk|dvd|floppy] --filename <filename>
[--size <megabytes>|--sizebyte <bytes>]
[--diffparent <uuid>|<filename>
[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD] (default: VDI)
[--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]
modifymedium [disk|dvd|floppy] <uuid|filename>
[--type normal|writethrough|immutable|shareable|
readonly|multiattach]
[--autoreset on|off]
[--property <name=[value]>]
[--compact]
[--resize <megabytes>|--resizebyte <bytes>]
clonemedium [disk|dvd|floppy] <uuid|inputfile> <uuid|outputfile>
[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD|RAW|<other>]
[--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]
[--existing]
mediumproperty [disk|dvd|floppy] set <uuid|filename>
<property> <value>
[disk|dvd|floppy] get <uuid|filename>
<property>
[disk|dvd|floppy] delete <uuid|filename>
<property>
encryptmedium <uuid|filename>
[--newpassword <file>|-]
[--oldpassword <file>|-]
[--cipher <cipher identifier>]
[--newpasswordid <password identifier>]
checkmediumpwd <uuid|filename>
<pwd file>|-
convertfromraw <filename> <outputfile>
[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD]
[--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]
[--uuid <uuid>]
convertfromraw stdin <outputfile> <bytes>
[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD]
[--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]
[--uuid <uuid>]
getextradata global|<uuid|vmname>
<key>|enumerate
setextradata global|<uuid|vmname>
<key>
[<value>] (no value deletes key)
setproperty machinefolder default|<folder> |
hwvirtexclusive on|off |
vrdeauthlibrary default|<library> |
websrvauthlibrary default|null|<library> |
vrdeextpack null|<library> |
autostartdbpath null|<folder> |
loghistorycount <value>
defaultfrontend default|<name>
logginglevel <log setting>
usbfilter add <index,0-N>
--target <uuid|vmname>|global
--name <string>
--action ignore|hold (global filters only)
[--active yes|no] (yes)
[--vendorid <XXXX>] (null)
[--productid <XXXX>] (null)
[--revision <IIFF>] (null)
[--manufacturer <string>] (null)
[--product <string>] (null)
[--remote yes|no] (null, VM filters only)
[--serialnumber <string>] (null)
[--maskedinterfaces <XXXXXXXX>]
usbfilter modify <index,0-N>
--target <uuid|vmname>|global
[--name <string>]
[--action ignore|hold] (global filters only)
[--active yes|no]
[--vendorid <XXXX>|""]
[--productid <XXXX>|""]
[--revision <IIFF>|""]
[--manufacturer <string>|""]
[--product <string>|""]
[--remote yes|no] (null, VM filters only)
[--serialnumber <string>|""]
[--maskedinterfaces <XXXXXXXX>]
usbfilter remove <index,0-N>
--target <uuid|vmname>|global
sharedfolder add <uuid|vmname>
--name <name> --hostpath <hostpath>
[--transient] [--readonly] [--automount]
sharedfolder remove <uuid|vmname>
--name <name> [--transient]
guestproperty get <uuid|vmname>
<property> [--verbose]
guestproperty set <uuid|vmname>
<property> [<value> [--flags <flags>]]
guestproperty delete|unset <uuid|vmname>
<property>
guestproperty enumerate <uuid|vmname>
[--patterns <patterns>]
guestproperty wait <uuid|vmname> <patterns>
[--timeout <msec>] [--fail-on-timeout]
guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> [--verbose|-v] [--quiet|-q]
[--username <name>] [--domain <domain>]
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>]
run [common-options]
[--exe <path to executable>] [--timeout <msec>]
[-E|--putenv <NAME>[=<VALUE>]] [--unquoted-args]
[--ignore-operhaned-processes] [--no-profile]
[--no-wait-stdout|--wait-stdout]
[--no-wait-stderr|--wait-stderr]
[--dos2unix] [--unix2dos]
-- <program/arg0> [argument1] ... [argumentN]]
start [common-options]
[--exe <path to executable>] [--timeout <msec>]
[-E|--putenv <NAME>[=<VALUE>]] [--unquoted-args]
[--ignore-operhaned-processes] [--no-profile]
-- <program/arg0> [argument1] ... [argumentN]]
copyfrom [common-options]
[--dryrun] [--follow] [-R|--recursive]
<guest-src0> [guest-src1 [...]] <host-dst>
copyfrom [common-options]
[--dryrun] [--follow] [-R|--recursive]
[--target-directory <host-dst-dir>]
<guest-src0> [guest-src1 [...]]
copyto [common-options]
[--dryrun] [--follow] [-R|--recursive]
<host-src0> [host-src1 [...]] <guest-dst>
copyto [common-options]
[--dryrun] [--follow] [-R|--recursive]
[--target-directory <guest-dst>]
<host-src0> [host-src1 [...]]
mkdir|createdir[ectory] [common-options]
[--parents] [--mode <mode>]
<guest directory> [...]
rmdir|removedir[ectory] [common-options]
[-R|--recursive]
<guest directory> [...]
removefile|rm [common-options] [-f|--force]
<guest file> [...]
mv|move|ren[ame] [common-options]
<source> [source1 [...]] <dest>
mktemp|createtemp[orary] [common-options]
[--secure] [--mode <mode>] [--tmpdir <directory>]
<template>
stat [common-options]
<file> [...]
guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> [--verbose|-v] [--quiet|-q]
list <all|sessions|processes|files> [common-opts]
closeprocess [common-options]
< --session-id <ID>
| --session-name <name or pattern>
<PID1> [PID1 [...]]
closesession [common-options]
< --all | --session-id <ID>
| --session-name <name or pattern> >
updatega|updateguestadditions|updateadditions
[--source <guest additions .ISO>]
[--wait-start] [common-options]
[-- [<argument1>] ... [<argumentN>]]
watch [common-options]
debugvm <uuid|vmname>
dumpguestcore --filename <name> |
info <item> [args] |
injectnmi |
log [--release|--debug] <settings> ...|
logdest [--release|--debug] <settings> ...|
logflags [--release|--debug] <settings> ...|
osdetect |
osinfo |
osdmesg [--lines|-n <N>] |
getregisters [--cpu <id>] <reg>|all ... |
setregisters [--cpu <id>] <reg>=<value> ... |
show [--human-readable|--sh-export|--sh-eval|
--cmd-set]
<logdbg-settings|logrel-settings>
[[opt] what ...] |
statistics [--reset] [--pattern <pattern>]
[--descriptions]
metrics list [*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]
(comma-separated)
metrics setup
[--period <seconds>] (default: 1)
[--samples <count>] (default: 1)
[--list]
[*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]
metrics query [*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]
metrics enable
[--list]
[*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]
metrics disable
[--list]
[*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]
metrics collect
[--period <seconds>] (default: 1)
[--samples <count>] (default: 1)
[--list]
[--detach]
[*|host|<vmname> [<metric_list>]]
natnetwork add --netname <name>
--network <network>
[--enable|--disable]
[--dhcp on|off]
[--port-forward-4 <rule>]
[--loopback-4 <rule>]
[--ipv6 on|off]
[--port-forward-6 <rule>]
[--loopback-6 <rule>]
natnetwork remove --netname <name>
natnetwork modify --netname <name>
[--network <network>]
[--enable|--disable]
[--dhcp on|off]
[--port-forward-4 <rule>]
[--loopback-4 <rule>]
[--ipv6 on|off]
[--port-forward-6 <rule>]
[--loopback-6 <rule>]
natnetwork start --netname <name>
natnetwork stop --netname <name>
hostonlyif ipconfig <name>
[--dhcp |
--ip<ipv4> [--netmask<ipv4> (def: 255.255.255.0)] |
--ipv6<ipv6> [--netmasklengthv6<length> (def: 64)]]
create |
remove <name>
dhcpserver add|modify --netname <network_name> |
--ifname <hostonly_if_name>
[--ip <ip_address>
--netmask <network_mask>
--lowerip <lower_ip>
--upperip <upper_ip>]
[--enable | --disable]
dhcpserver remove --netname <network_name> |
--ifname <hostonly_if_name>
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> dumpvmcore [--filename=name]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> info <item> [args...]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> injectnmi
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> log [[--release] | [--debug]] [group-settings...]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> logdest [[--release] | [--debug]] [destinations...]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> logflags [[--release] | [--debug]] [flags...]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> osdetect
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> osinfo
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> osdmesg [--lines=lines]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> getregisters [--cpu=id] [reg-set.reg-name...]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> setregisters [--cpu=id] [reg-set.reg-name=value...]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> show [[--human-readable] | [--sh-export] | [--sh-eval] | [--cmd-set]] [settings-item...]
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> statistics [--reset] [--descriptions] [--pattern=pattern]
VBoxManage extpack install [--replace] <tarball>
VBoxManage extpack uninstall [--force] <name>
VBoxManage extpack cleanup
Each time VBoxManage is invoked, only one command can be executed. However, a command might support several subcommands which then can be invoked in one single call. The following sections provide detailed reference information on the different commands.
--version: show the version of
this tool and exit.
--nologo: suppress the output
of the logo information (useful for scripts)
--settingspw: specifiy a settings
password
--settingspwfile: specify a file
containing the settings password.
The settings password is used for certain settings which need to be
stored encrypted for security reasons. At the moment, the only encrypted
setting is the iSCSI initiator secret (see
Section 8.18, “VBoxManage storageattach” for details). As long as no
settings password is specified, this information is stored in
plain text. After using the
--settingspw|--settingspwfile option
once, it must be always used, otherwise the encrypted setting cannot
be unencrypted.
The list command gives relevant
information about your system and information about VirtualBox's current
settings.
The following subcommands are available with
VBoxManage list:
vms lists all virtual
machines currently registered with VirtualBox. By default this
displays a compact list with each VM's name and UUID; if you also
specify --long or
-l, this will be a detailed list as
with the showvminfo command (see
below).
runningvms lists all
currently running virtual machines by their unique identifiers
(UUIDs) in the same format as with
vms.
ostypes lists all guest
operating systems presently known to VirtualBox, along with the
identifiers used to refer to them with the
modifyvm command.
hostdvds,
hostfloppies, respectively, list
DVD, floppy, bridged networking and host-only networking interfaces
on the host, along with the name used to access them from within
VirtualBox.
bridgedifs,
hostonlyifs and
dhcpservers, respectively, list
bridged network interfaces, host-only network interfaces and DHCP
servers currently available on the host. Please see Chapter 6, Virtual networking for details on these.
hostinfo displays information
about the host system, such as CPUs, memory size and operating
system version.
hostcpuids dumps the CPUID
parameters for the host CPUs. This can be used for a more fine
grained analyis of the host's virtualization capabilities.
hddbackends lists all known
virtual disk back-ends of VirtualBox. For each such format (such as
VDI, VMDK or RAW), this lists the back-end's capabilities and
configuration.
hdds,
dvds and
floppies all give you information
about virtual disk images currently in use by VirtualBox, including
all their settings, the unique identifiers (UUIDs) associated with
them by VirtualBox and all files associated with them. This is the
command-line equivalent of the Virtual Media Manager; see Section 5.3, “The Virtual Media Manager”.
usbhost supplies information
about USB devices attached to the host, notably information useful
for constructing USB filters and whether they are currently in use
by the host.
usbfilters lists all global
USB filters registered with VirtualBox -- that is, filters for
devices which are accessible to all virtual machines -- and displays
the filter parameters.
systemproperties displays
some global VirtualBox settings, such as minimum and maximum guest
RAM and virtual hard disk size, folder settings and the current
authentication library in use.
extpacks displays all
VirtualBox extension packs currently installed; see Section 1.5, “Installing VirtualBox and extension packs” and Section 8.36, “VBoxManage extpack” for more information.
The showvminfo command shows
information about a particular virtual machine. This is the same
information as VBoxManage list vms --long
would show for all virtual machines.
You will get information similar to the following:
$ VBoxManage showvminfo "Windows XP" VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 5.0.10 (C) 2005-2015 Oracle Corporation All rights reserved. Name: Windows XP Guest OS: Other/Unknown UUID: 1bf3464d-57c6-4d49-92a9-a5cc3816b7e7 Config file: /home/username/.config/VirtualBox/Machines/Windows XP/Windows XP.xml Memory size: 512MB VRAM size: 12MB Number of CPUs: 2 Synthetic Cpu: off Boot menu mode: message and menu Boot Device (1): DVD Boot Device (2): HardDisk Boot Device (3): Not Assigned Boot Device (4): Not Assigned ACPI: on IOAPIC: on PAE: on Time offset: 0 ms Hardw. virt.ext: on Nested Paging: on VT-x VPID: off State: powered off (since 2009-10-20T14:52:19.000000000) Monitor count: 1 3D Acceleration: off 2D Video Acceleration: off Teleporter Enabled: off Teleporter Port: 0 Teleporter Address: Teleporter Password: Storage Controller (0): IDE Controller Storage Controller Type (0): PIIX4 Storage Controller (1): Floppy Controller 1 Storage Controller Type (1): I82078 IDE Controller (0, 0): /home/user/windows.vdi (UUID: 46f6e53a-4557-460a-9b95-68b0f17d744b) IDE Controller (0, 1): /home/user/openbsd-cd46.iso (UUID: 4335e162-59d3-4512-91d5-b63e94eebe0b) Floppy Controller 1 (0, 0): /home/user/floppy.img (UUID: 62ac6ccb-df36-42f2-972e-22f836368137) NIC 1: disabled NIC 2: disabled NIC 3: disabled NIC 4: disabled NIC 5: disabled NIC 6: disabled NIC 7: disabled NIC 8: disabled UART 1: disabled UART 2: disabled Audio: disabled (Driver: Unknown) Clipboard Mode: Bidirectional VRDE: disabled USB: disabled USB Device Filters: <none> Shared folders: <none> Statistics update: disabled
The registervm command allows you
to import a virtual machine definition in an XML file into VirtualBox. The
machine must not conflict with one already registered in VirtualBox and it
may not have any hard or removable disks attached. It is advisable to
place the definition file in the machines folder before registering
it.
When creating a new virtual machine with
VBoxManage createvm (see below), you
can directly specify the --register
option to avoid having to register it separately.
The unregistervm command
unregisters a virtual machine. If
--delete is also specified, the following
files will automatically be deleted as well:
all hard disk image files, including differencing files, which are used by the machine and not shared with other machines;
saved state files that the machine created, if any (one if the machine was in "saved" state and one for each online snapshot);
the machine XML file and its backups;
the machine log files, if any;
the machine directory, if it is empty after having deleted all the above.
This command creates a new XML virtual machine definition file.
The --name <name> parameter
is required and must specify the name of the machine. Since this name is
used by default as the file name of the settings file (with the extension
.xml) and the machine folder (a subfolder
of the .config/VirtualBox/Machines folder - this folder name may vary depending on the operating system and the version of VirtualBox which you are using), it
must conform to your host operating system's requirements for file name
specifications. If the VM is later renamed, the file and folder names will
change automatically.
However, if the --basefolder
<path> option is used, the machine folder will be
named <path>. In this case, the
names of the file and the folder will not change if the virtual machine is
renamed.
By default, this command only creates the XML file without
automatically registering the VM with your VirtualBox installation. To
register the VM instantly, use the optional
--register option, or run
VBoxManage registervm separately
afterwards.
This command changes the properties of a registered virtual machine
which is not running. Most of the properties that this command makes
available correspond to the VM settings that VirtualBox graphical user
interface displays in each VM's "Settings" dialog; these were described in
Chapter 3, Configuring virtual machines. Some of the more advanced settings,
however, are only available through the
VBoxManage interface.
These commands require that the machine is powered off (neither
running nor in "saved" state). Some machine settings can also be changed
while a machine is running; those settings will then have a corresponding
subcommand with the VBoxManage controlvm
subcommand (see Section 8.13, “VBoxManage controlvm”).
The following general settings are available through
VBoxManage modifyvm:
--name <name>: This
changes the VM's name and possibly renames the internal virtual
machine files, as described with VBoxManage
createvm above.
--groups <group>, ...:
This changes the group membership of a VM. Groups always start with
a / and can be nested. By default
VMs are in group /.
--description <desc>:
This changes the VM's description, which is a way to record details
about the VM in a way which is meaningful for the user. The GUI
interprets HTML formatting, the command line allows arbitrary
strings potentially containing multiple lines.
--ostype <ostype>:
This specifies what guest operating system is supposed to run in
the VM. To learn about the various identifiers that can be used
here, use VBoxManage list
ostypes.
--memory
<memorysize>: This sets the amount of RAM,
in MB, that the virtual machine should allocate for itself from
the host. See the remarks in Section 1.7, “Creating your first virtual machine” for
more information.
--vram <vramsize>:
This sets the amount of RAM that the virtual graphics card should
have. See Section 3.5, “Display settings” for details.
--acpi on|off;
--ioapic on|off: These two
determine whether the VM should have ACPI and I/O APIC support,
respectively; see Section 3.4.1, “"Motherboard" tab” for
details.
--hardwareuuid
<uuid>: The UUID presented to the guest via
memory tables (DMI/SMBIOS), hardware and guest properties. By
default this is the same as the VM uuid. Useful when cloning a VM.
Teleporting takes care of this automatically.
--cpus <cpucount>:
This sets the number of virtual CPUs for the virtual machine (see
Section 3.4.2, “"Processor" tab”). If CPU hot-plugging is
enabled (see below), this then sets the
maximum number of virtual CPUs that can be
plugged into the virtual machines.
--cpuhotplug on|off: This
enables CPU hot-plugging. When enabled, virtual CPUs can be added
to and removed from a virtual machine while it is running. See
Section 9.5, “CPU hot-plugging” for more information.
--plugcpu|unplugcpu
<id>: If CPU hot-plugging is enabled (see
above), this adds a virtual CPU to the virtual machines (or
removes one). <id>
specifies the index of the virtual CPU to be added or removed and
must be a number from 0 to the maximum no. of CPUs configured with
the --cpus option. CPU 0 can
never be removed.
--cpuexecutioncap
<1-100>: This setting controls how much cpu
time a virtual CPU can use. A value of 50 implies a single virtual
CPU can use up to 50% of a single host CPU.
--pae on|off: This
enables/disables PAE (see Section 3.4.2, “"Processor" tab”).
--longmode on|off: This
enables/disables long mode (see Section 3.4.2, “"Processor" tab”).
--synthcpu on|off: This
setting determines whether VirtualBox will expose a synthetic CPU
to the guest to allow live migration between host systems that
differ significantly.
--hpet on|off: This
enables/disables a High Precision Event Timer (HPET) which can
replace the legacy system timers. This is turned off by default.
Note that Windows supports a HPET only from Vista onwards.
--hwvirtex on|off: This
enables or disables the use of hardware virtualization extensions
(Intel VT-x or AMD-V) in the processor of your host system; see
Section 10.3, “Hardware vs. software virtualization”.
--triplefaultreset on|off:
This setting allows to reset the guest instead of triggering a
Guru Meditation. Some guests raise a triple fault to reset the
CPU so sometimes this is desired behavior. Works only for non-SMP
guests.
--paravirtprovider
none|default|legacy|minimal|hyperv|kvm: This
setting specifies which paravirtualization interface to provide to
the guest operating system. Specifying
none explicitly turns off exposing
any paravirtualization interface. The option
default, will pick an appropriate
interface depending on the guest OS type while starting the VM.
This is the default option chosen while creating new VMs. The
legacy option is chosen for VMs
which were created with older VirtualBox versions and will pick a
paravirtualization interface while starting the VM with VirtualBox
5.0 and newer. The minimal provider
is mandatory for Mac OS X guests, while
kvm and
hyperv are recommended for Linux
and Windows guests respectively. These options are explained in
detail under Section 10.4, “Paravirtualization providers”.
--nestedpaging on|off: If
hardware virtualization is enabled, this additional setting
enables or disables the use of the nested paging feature in the
processor of your host system; see Section 10.3, “Hardware vs. software virtualization”.
--largepages on|off: If
hardware virtualization and nested paging are
enabled, for Intel VT-x only, an additional performance
improvement of up to 5% can be obtained by enabling this setting.
This causes the hypervisor to use large pages to reduce TLB use
and overhead.
--vtxvpid on|off: If
hardware virtualization is enabled, for Intel VT-x only, this
additional setting enables or disables the use of the tagged TLB
(VPID) feature in the processor of your host system; see Section 10.3, “Hardware vs. software virtualization”.
--vtxux on|off: If
hardware virtualization is enabled, for Intel VT-x only, this
setting enables or disables the use of the unrestricted guest mode
feature for executing your guest.
--accelerate3d on|off: This
enables, if the Guest Additions are installed, whether hardware 3D
acceleration should be available; see Section 4.5.1, “Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL and Direct3D 8/9)”.
--accelerate2dvideo on|off:
This enables, if the Guest Additions are installed, whether 2D video
acceleration should be available; see Section 4.5.2, “Hardware 2D video acceleration for Windows guests”.
--chipset piix3|ich9:
By default VirtualBox emulates an Intel PIIX3 chipset. Usually there
is no reason to change the default setting unless it is required to
relax some of its constraints; see Section 3.4.1, “"Motherboard" tab”.
You can influence the BIOS logo that is displayed when a virtual machine starts up with a number of settings. Per default, a VirtualBox logo is displayed.
With --bioslogofadein
on|off and --bioslogofadeout
on|off, you can determine whether the logo should
fade in and out, respectively.
With --bioslogodisplaytime
<msec> you can set how long the logo should
be visible, in milliseconds.
With --bioslogoimagepath
<imagepath> you can, if you are so
inclined, replace the image that is shown, with your own logo. The
image must be an uncompressed 256 color BMP file without color
space information (Windows 3.0 format). The image must not be
bigger than 640 x 480.
--biosbootmenu
disabled|menuonly|messageandmenu: This specifies
whether the BIOS allows the user to select a temporary boot
device. menuonly suppresses the
message, but the user can still press F12 to select a temporary
boot device.
--nicbootprio<1-N>
<priority>: This specifies the order in which
NICs are tried for booting over the network (using PXE). The
priority is an integer in the 0 to 4 range. Priority 1 is the
highest, priority 4 is low. Priority 0, which is the default unless
otherwise specified, is the lowest.
Note that this option only has effect when the Intel PXE boot ROM is used.
--biospxedebug on|off:
This option enables additional debugging output when using the
Intel PXE boot ROM. The output will be written to the release log
file (Section 12.1.2, “Collecting debugging information”.
--boot<1-4>
none|floppy|dvd|disk|net: This specifies the boot
order for the virtual machine. There are four "slots", which the
VM will try to access from 1 to 4, and for each of which you can
set a device that the VM should attempt to boot from.
--rtcuseutc on|off: This
option lets the real-time clock (RTC) operate in UTC time (see
Section 3.4.1, “"Motherboard" tab”).
--biossystemtimeoffset <ms>:
This allows you to set a fixed time offset of the guest relative to
the host time. The offset is specified in milliseconds. If the offset
is positive the guest time runs ahead the host time.
--snapshotfolder
default|<path>: This allows you to specify
the folder in which snapshots will be kept for a virtual
machine.
--firmware efi|bios:
Specifies which firmware is used to boot particular virtual
machine: EFI or BIOS. Use EFI only if your fully understand what
you're doing.
--guestmemoryballoon
<size> sets the default size of the guest
memory balloon, that is, memory allocated by the VirtualBox Guest
Additions from the guest operating system and returned to the
hypervisor for re-use by other virtual machines.
<size> must be specified in
megabytes. The default size is 0 megabytes. For details,
see Section 4.9.1, “Memory ballooning”.
--defaultfrontend
default|<name>: This allows you to specify
the default frontend which will be used when starting this VM; see
Section 8.12, “VBoxManage startvm” for details.
The following networking settings are available through
VBoxManage modifyvm. With all these
settings, the decimal number directly following the option name ("1-N"
in the list below) specifies the virtual network adapter whose settings
should be changed.
--nic<1-N>
none|null|nat|natnetwork|bridged|intnet|hostonly|generic:
With this, you can set, for each of the VM's virtual network cards,
what type of networking should be available. They can be not
present (none), not connected to
the host (null), use network
address translation (nat),
use the new network address translation engine
(natnetwork),
bridged networking (bridged) or
communicate with other virtual machines using internal networking
(intnet), host-only networking
(hostonly), or access rarely used
sub-modes (generic).
These options correspond
to the modes which are described in detail in Section 6.2, “Introduction to networking modes”.
--nicpromisc<1-N>
deny|allow-vms|allow-all:
This allows you, for each of the VM's virtual network cards, to
specify how the promiscious mode is handled. This setting is only
relevant for bridged networking.
deny (default setting) hides
any traffic not intended for this VM.
allow-vms hides all host
traffic from this VM but allows the VM to see traffic from/to other
VMs.
allow-all removes this
restriction completely.
--nictype<1-N>
Am79C970A|Am79C973|82540EM|82543GC|82545EM|virtio:
This allows you, for each of the VM's virtual network cards, to
specify which networking hardware VirtualBox presents to the
guest; see Section 6.1, “Virtual networking hardware”.
--cableconnected<1-N>
on|off: This allows you to temporarily disconnect
a virtual network interface, as if a network cable had been pulled
from a real network card. This might be useful for resetting
certain software components in the VM.
With the "nictrace" options, you can optionally trace network traffic by dumping it to a file, for debugging purposes.
With --nictrace<1-N>
on|off, you can enable network tracing for a
particular virtual network card.
If enabled, you must specify with
--nictracefile<1-N>
<filename> what file the trace should be
logged to.
--natnet<1-N>
<network>|default:
If the networking type is set to nat
(not natnetwork) then this
setting specifies the IP address range to be used for
this network. See Section 9.11, “Fine-tuning the VirtualBox NAT engine” for an
example.
--nat-network<1-N> <network
name>: If the networking type is set to
natnetwork (not
nat) then this setting specifies
the name of the NAT network this adapter is connected to.
--bridgeadapter<1-N>
none|<devicename>: If bridged networking
has been enabled for a virtual network card (see the
--nic option above; otherwise
this setting has no effect), use this option to specify which host
interface the given virtual network interface will use. For
details, please see Section 6.5, “Bridged networking”.
--hostonlyadapter<1-N>
none|<devicename>: If host-only networking
has been enabled for a virtual network card (see the --nic option
above; otherwise this setting has no effect), use this option to
specify which host-only networking interface the given virtual
network interface will use. For details, please see Section 6.7, “Host-only networking”.
--intnet<1-N>
network: If internal networking has been enabled
for a virtual network card (see the
--nic option above; otherwise
this setting has no effect), use this option to specify the name
of the internal network (see Section 6.6, “Internal networking”).
--macaddress<1-N>
auto|<mac>: With this option you can set
the MAC address of the virtual network card. Normally, each
virtual network card is assigned a random address by VirtualBox at
VM creation.
--nicgenericdrv<1-N>
<backend driver>: If generic networking has been
enabled for a virtual network card (see the
--nic option above; otherwise
this setting has no effect), this mode allows you to access
rarely used networking sub-modes, such as VDE network or UDP Tunnel.
--nicproperty<1-N>
<paramname>="paramvalue":
This option, in combination with "nicgenericdrv" allows you to
pass parameters to rarely-used network backends.
Those parameters are backend engine-specific, and are different between UDP Tunnel and the VDE backend drivers. For example, please see Section 6.8, “UDP Tunnel networking”.
The following NAT networking settings are available through
VBoxManage modifyvm. With all these
settings, the decimal number directly following the option name ("1-N"
in the list below) specifies the virtual network adapter whose
settings should be changed.
--natpf<1-N>
[<name>],tcp|udp,[<hostip>],<hostport>,[<guestip>],
<guestport>: This option defines a NAT
port-forwarding rule (please see Section 6.3.1, “Configuring port forwarding with NAT”
for details).
--natpf<1-N> delete
<name>: This option deletes a NAT
port-forwarding rule (please see Section 6.3.1, “Configuring port forwarding with NAT”
for details).
--nattftpprefix<1-N>
<prefix>: This option defines a prefix
for the built-in TFTP server, i.e. where the boot file is
located (please see Section 6.3.2, “PXE booting with NAT” and Section 9.11.2, “Configuring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network
interface” for details).
--nattftpfile<1-N>
<bootfile>: This option defines the TFT
boot file (please see Section 9.11.2, “Configuring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network
interface” for
details).
--nattftpserver<1-N>
<tftpserver>: This option defines the
TFTP server address to boot from (please see Section 9.11.2, “Configuring the boot server (next server) of a NAT network
interface” for details).
--natdnspassdomain<1-N>
on|off: This option specifies whether the
built-in DHCP server passes the domain name for network name
resolution.
--natdnsproxy<1-N>
on|off: This option makes the NAT engine proxy
all guest DNS requests to the host's DNS servers (please see
Section 9.11.5, “Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode” for details).
--natdnshostresolver<1-N>
on|off: This option makes the NAT engine use
the host's resolver mechanisms to handle DNS requests (please
see Section 9.11.5, “Enabling DNS proxy in NAT mode” for details).
--natsettings<1-N>
[<mtu>],[<socksnd>],[<sockrcv>],[<tcpsnd>],
[<tcprcv>]: This option controls several
NAT settings (please see Section 9.11.3, “Tuning TCP/IP buffers for NAT” for
details).
--nataliasmode<1-N>
default|[log],[proxyonly],[sameports]: This
option defines behaviour of NAT engine core: log - enables
logging, proxyonly - switches of aliasing mode makes NAT
transparent, sameports enforces NAT engine to send packets via
the same port as they originated on, default - disable all
mentioned modes above . (please see Section 9.11.7, “Configuring aliasing of the NAT engine” for details).
The following other hardware settings, such as serial port, audio,
clipboard, drag and drop, monitor and USB settings are available through
VBoxManage modifyvm:
--uart<1-N> off|<I/O base>
<IRQ>: With this option you can configure
virtual serial ports for the VM; see Section 3.9, “Serial ports” for an introduction.
--uartmode<1-N>
<arg>: This setting controls how VirtualBox
connects a given virtual serial port (previously configured with
the --uartX setting, see above)
to the host on which the virtual machine is running. As described
in detail in Section 3.9, “Serial ports”, for each such port,
you can specify <arg> as
one of the following options:
disconnected: Even
though the serial port is shown to the guest, it has no
"other end" -- like a real COM port without a cable.
server
<pipename>: On a Windows host, this
tells VirtualBox to create a named pipe on the host named
<pipename> and
connect the virtual serial device to it. Note that Windows
requires that the name of a named pipe begin with
\\.\pipe\.
On a Linux host, instead of a named pipe, a local domain socket is used.
client
<pipename>: This operates just like
server ..., except that the
pipe (or local domain socket) is not created by VirtualBox,
but assumed to exist already.
tcpserver
<port>: This
tells VirtualBox to create a TCP socket on the host with TCP
<port> and
connect the virtual serial device to it. Note that UNIX-like
systems require ports over 1024 for normal users.
tcpclient
<hostname:port>: This operates just like
tcpserver ..., except that the
TCP socket is not created by VirtualBox,
but assumed to exist already.
<devicename>:
If, instead of the above, the device name of a physical
hardware serial port of the host is specified, the virtual
serial port is connected to that hardware port. On a Windows
host, the device name will be a COM port such as
COM1; on a Linux host, the
device name will look like
/dev/ttyS0. This allows you
to "wire" a real serial port to a virtual machine.
--lptmode<1-N>
<Device>:
Specifies the Device Name of the parallel port that
the Parallel Port feature will be using. Use this
before --lpt.
This feature is host operating system specific.
--lpt<1-N>
<I/O base> <IRQ>:
Specifies the I/O address of the parallel port and the IRQ
number that the Parallel Port feature will be using. Use this
after
--lptmod. I/O base address and IRQ are
the values that guest sees i.e. the values avalable under guest Device Manager.
--audio none|null|oss: With
this option, you can set whether the VM should have audio
support.
--clipboard
disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost|bidirectional:
With this setting, you can select if and how the guest or host
operating system's clipboard should be shared with the host or guest;
see Section 3.3, “General settings”. This requires that the Guest
Additions be installed in the virtual machine.
--draganddrop
disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost|bidirectional:
With this setting, you can select the current drag and drop mode
being used between the host and the virtual machine;
see Section 4.4, “Drag and Drop”. This requires that the Guest
Additions be installed in the virtual machine.
--monitorcount
<count>: This enables multi-monitor
support; see Section 3.5, “Display settings”.
--usb on|off: This option
enables or disables the VM's virtual USB controller; see Section 3.10.1, “USB settings” for details.
--usbehci on|off: This
option enables or disables the VM's virtual USB 2.0 controller;
see Section 3.10.1, “USB settings” for details.
--usbxhci on|off: This
option enables or disables the VM's virtual USB 3.0 controller;
see Section 3.10.1, “USB settings” for details.
The following settings for changing video recording parameters are
available through VBoxManage modifyvm.
--videocap on|off:
This option enables or disables recording a VM session into a WebM/VP8
file. If this option is enabled, recording will start when the VM
session is started.
--videocapscreens all|<screen ID>
[<screen ID> ...]: This option allows to specify which screens of
the VM are being recorded. Each screen is recorded into a separate file.
--videocapfile <filename>:
This option sets the filename VirtualBox uses to save the recorded content.
--videocapres <width>x<height>:
This option sets the resolution (in pixels) of the recorded video.
--videocaprate <rate>:
This option sets the bitrate in kilobits (kb) per second. Increasing this
value makes the video look better for the cost of an increased file size.
--videocapfps <fps>:
This option sets the maximum number of frames per second (FPS) to be
recorded. Frames with a higher frequency will be skipped. Reducing this
value increases the number of skipped frames and reduces the file size.
--videocapmaxtime <ms>:
This option sets the maximum time in milliseconds the video capturing
will be enabled since activation. The capturing stops when the defined
time interval has elapsed. If this value is zero the capturing is not
limited by time.
--videocapmaxsize <MB>:
This option limits the maximum size of the captured video file (in MB).
The capturing stops when the file size has reached the specified size. If
this value is zero the capturing will not be limited by file size.
--videocapopts <key=value>
[,<key=value> ...]:
This format can be used to specify additional video capturing options.
These options only are for advanced users and must be specified in a
comma-separated key=value format, e.g.
foo=bar,a=b.
The following settings that affect remote machine behavior are
available through VBoxManage
modifyvm:
--vrde on|off:
This enables or disables the VirtualBox remote desktop extension
(VRDE) server.
--vrdeextpack default|<name>:
Allows to specify the library to use for to access the VM
remotely. The default is to use the RDP code which is part of the
Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack.
--vrdeport
default|<ports>: A port or a range of ports
the VRDE server can bind to; "default" or "0" means port 3389, the
standard port for RDP. You can specify a comma-separated list of
ports or ranges of ports. Use a dash between two port numbers to
specify a range. The VRDE server will bind to one of available ports from the specified
list. Only one machine can use a given port at a time. For
example, the option --vrdeport
5000,5010-5012 will tell the server to bind to
one of following ports: 5000, 5010, 5011 or 5012.
--vrdeaddress <IP
address>: The IP address of the host network
interface the VRDE server will bind to. If specified, the server
will accept connections only on the specified host network
interface.
The setting can be used to specify whether the VRDP server should accept either IPv4 or IPv6 or both connections:
only IPv4: --vrdeaddress "0.0.0.0"
only IPv6: --vrdeaddress "::"
both IPv6 and IPv4 (default): --vrdeaddress ""
--vrdeauthtype
null|external|guest: This allows you to choose
whether and how authorization will be performed; see Section 7.1.5, “RDP authentication” for details.
--vrdeauthlibrary
default|<name>: This allos to set the
library used for RDP authentication, see Section 7.1.5, “RDP authentication” for details.
--vrdemulticon on|off: This
enables multiple connections to the same VRDE server, if the
server supports this feature; see Section 7.1.7, “Multiple connections to the VRDP server”.
--vrdereusecon on|off: This
specifies the VRDE server behavior when multiple connections are
disabled. When this option is enabled, the server will allow a new
client to connect and will drop the existing connection. When this
option is disabled (this is the default setting), a new connection
will not be accepted if there is already a client connected to the
server.
--vrdevideochannel on|off:
This enables video redirection, if it is supported by the VRDE
server; see Section 7.1.9, “VRDP video redirection”.
--vrdevideochannelquality
<percent>: Sets the image quality for video
redirection; see Section 7.1.9, “VRDP video redirection”.
With the following commands for VBoxManage
modifyvm you can configure a machine to be a target for
teleporting. See Section 7.2, “Teleporting” for an
introduction.
--teleporter on|off: With
this setting you turn on or off whether a machine waits for a
teleporting request to come in on the network when it is started.
If "on", when the machine is started, it does not boot the virtual
machine as it would normally; instead, it then waits for a
teleporting request to come in on the port and address listed with
the next two parameters.
--teleporterport
<port>, --teleporteraddress
<address>: these must be used with
--teleporter and tell the virtual machine on which port and
address it should listen for a teleporting request from another
virtual machine. <port> can
be any free TCP/IP port number (e.g. 6000);
<address> can be any IP
address or hostname and specifies the TCP/IP socket to bind to.
The default is "0.0.0.0", which means any address.
--teleporterpassword
<password>: if this optional argument is
given, then the teleporting request will only succeed if the
source machine specifies the same password as the one given with
this command.
--teleporterpasswordfile
<password>: if this optional argument is
given, then the teleporting request will only succeed if the
source machine specifies the same password as the one specified
in the file give with this command. Use stdin
to read the password from stdin.
--cpuid <leaf> <eax> <ebx>
<ecx> <edx>: Advanced users can use
this command before a teleporting operation to restrict the
virtual CPU capabilities that VirtualBox presents to the guest
operating system. This must be run on both the source and the
target machines involved in the teleporting and will then modify
what the guest sees when it executes the
CPUID machine instruction. This
might help with misbehaving applications that wrongly assume that
certain CPU capabilities are present. The meaning of the
parameters is hardware dependent; please refer to the AMD or Intel
processor manuals.
The following settings are only relevant for low-level VM debugging. Regular users will never need these settings.
--tracing-enabled on|off:
Enable the tracebuffer. This consumes some memory for the tracebuffer
and adds extra overhead.
--tracing-config <config-string>:
Allows to configure tracing. In particular this defines which group of
tracepoints are enabled.
This command creates a full or linked copy of an existing virtual machine.
The clonevm subcommand takes at
least the name of the virtual machine which should be cloned. The following
additional settings can be used to further configure the clone VM
operation:
--snapshot <uuid>|<name>:
Select a specific snapshot where the clone operation should refer
to. Default is referring to the current state.
--mode machine|machineandchildren|all:
Selects the cloning mode of the operation. If
machine is selected (the default),
the current state of the VM without any snapshots is cloned. In the
machineandchildren mode the snapshot
provided by --snapshot and all
child snapshots are cloned. If all
is the selected mode all snapshots and the current state are cloned.
--options link|keepallmacs|keepnatmacs|keepdisknames:
Allows additional fine tuning of the clone operation. The first
option defines that a linked clone should be created, which is
only possible for a machine clone from a snapshot. The next two
options allow to define how the MAC addresses of every virtual
network card should be handled. They can either be reinitialized
(the default), left unchanged
(keepallmacs) or left unchanged
when the network type is NAT
(keepnatmacs). If you add
keepdisknames all new disk images
are called like the original ones, otherwise they are
renamed.
--name <name>: Select a
new name for the new virtual machine. Default is "Original Name
Clone".
--basefolder <basefolder>:
Select the folder where the new virtual machine configuration should
be saved in.
--uuid <uuid>:
Select the UUID the new VM should have. This id has to be unique in
the VirtualBox instance this clone should be registered. Default is
creating a new UUID.
--register:
Automatically register the new clone in this VirtualBox
installation. If you manually want to register the new VM later, see
Section 8.6, “VBoxManage registervm / unregistervm” for instructions how to do
so.
This command imports a virtual appliance in OVF format by copying the virtual disk images and creating virtual machines in VirtualBox. See Section 1.14, “Importing and exporting virtual machines” for an introduction to appliances.
The import subcommand takes at
least the path name of an OVF file as input and expects the disk images,
if needed, in the same directory as the OVF file. A lot of additional
command-line options are supported to control in detail what is being
imported and modify the import parameters, but the details depend on the
content of the OVF file.
It is therefore recommended to first run the import subcommand with
the --dry-run or
-n option. This will then print a
description of the appliance's contents to the screen how it would be
imported into VirtualBox, together with the optional command-line options
to influence the import behavior.
As an example, here is the screen output with a sample appliance containing a Windows XP guest:
VBoxManage import WindowsXp.ovf --dry-run
Interpreting WindowsXp.ovf...
OK.
Virtual system 0:
0: Suggested OS type: "WindowsXP"
(change with "--vsys 0 --ostype <type>"; use "list ostypes" to list all)
1: Suggested VM name "Windows XP Professional_1"
(change with "--vsys 0 --vmname <name>")
3: Number of CPUs: 1
(change with "--vsys 0 --cpus <n>")
4: Guest memory: 956 MB (change with "--vsys 0 --memory <MB>")
5: Sound card (appliance expects "ensoniq1371", can change on import)
(disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 5 --ignore")
6: USB controller
(disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 6 --ignore")
7: Network adapter: orig bridged, config 2, extra type=bridged
8: Floppy
(disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 8 --ignore")
9: SCSI controller, type BusLogic
(change with "--vsys 0 --unit 9 --scsitype {BusLogic|LsiLogic}";
disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 9 --ignore")
10: IDE controller, type PIIX4
(disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 10 --ignore")
11: Hard disk image: source image=WindowsXp.vmdk,
target path=/home/user/disks/WindowsXp.vmdk, controller=9;channel=0
(change controller with "--vsys 0 --unit 11 --controller <id>";
disable with "--vsys 0 --unit 11 --ignore")As you can see, the individual configuration items are numbered, and
depending on their type support different command-line options. The import
subcommand can be directed to ignore many such items with a
--vsys X --unit Y --ignore option, where
X is the number of the virtual system (zero unless there are several
virtual system descriptions in the appliance) and Y the item number, as
printed on the screen.
In the above example, Item #1 specifies the name of the target
machine in VirtualBox. Items #9 and #10 specify hard disk controllers,
respectively. Item #11 describes a hard disk image; in this case, the
additional --controller option indicates
which item the disk image should be connected to, with the default coming
from the OVF file.
You can combine several items for the same virtual system behind the
same --vsys option. For example, to
import a machine as described in the OVF, but without the sound card and
without the USB controller, and with the disk image connected to the IDE
controller instead of the SCSI controller, use this:
VBoxManage import WindowsXp.ovf
--vsys 0 --unit 5 --ignore --unit 6 --ignore --unit 11 --controller 10This command exports one or more virtual machines from VirtualBox into a virtual appliance in OVF format, including copying their virtual disk images to compressed VMDK. See Section 1.14, “Importing and exporting virtual machines” for an introduction to appliances.
The export command is simple to
use: list the machine (or the machines) that you would like to export to
the same OVF file and specify the target OVF file after an additional
--output or
-o option. Note that the directory of the
target OVF file will also receive the exported disk images in the
compressed VMDK format (regardless of the original format) and should have
enough disk space left for them.
Beside a simple export of a given virtual machine, you can append
several product information to the appliance file. Use
--product,
--producturl,
--vendor,
--vendorurl and
--version to specify this additional
information. For legal reasons you may add a license text or the content
of a license file by using the --eula and
--eulafile option respectively. As with
OVF import, you must use the --vsys X
option to direct the previously mentioned options to the correct virtual
machine.
For virtualization products which aren't fully compatible with the
OVF standard 1.0 you can enable a OVF 0.9 legacy mode with the
--legacy09 option.
To specify options controlling the exact content of the appliance
file, you can use --options to request the
creation of a manifest file (encouraged, allows detection of corrupted
appliances on import), the additional export of DVD images, and the
exclusion of MAC addresses. You can specify a list of options, e.g.
--options manifest,nomacs. For details,
check the help output of VBoxManage export.
This command starts a virtual machine that is currently in the "Powered off" or "Saved" states.
The optional --type specifier
determines whether the machine will be started in a window or whether the
output should go through VBoxHeadless,
with VRDE enabled or not; see Section 7.1.2, “VBoxHeadless, the remote desktop server” for more
information. The list of types is subject to change, and it's not
guaranteed that all types are accepted by any product variant.
The global or per-VM default value for the VM frontend type will be taken if the type is not explicitly specified. If none of these are set, the GUI variant will be started.
The following values are allowed:
guiStarts a VM showing a GUI window. This is the default.
headlessStarts a VM without a window for remote display only.
sdlStarts a VM with a minimal GUI and limited features.
separateStarts a VM with detachable UI (technically it is a headless VM with user interface in a separate process). This is an experimental feature as it lacks certain functionality at the moment (e.g. 3D acceleration will not work).
If you experience problems with starting virtual machines with particular frontends and there is no conclusive error information, consider starting virtual machines directly by running the respective front-end, as this can give additional error information.
The controlvm subcommand allows you
to change the state of a virtual machine that is currently running. The
following can be specified:
VBoxManage controlvm <vm>
pause temporarily puts a virtual machine on hold,
without changing its state for good. The VM window will be painted
in gray to indicate that the VM is currently paused. (This is
equivalent to selecting the "Pause" item in the "Machine" menu of
the GUI.)
Use VBoxManage controlvm <vm>
resume to undo a previous
pause command. (This is equivalent
to selecting the "Resume" item in the "Machine" menu of the
GUI.)
VBoxManage controlvm <vm>
reset has the same effect on a virtual machine as
pressing the "Reset" button on a real computer: a cold reboot of the
virtual machine, which will restart and boot the guest operating
system again immediately. The state of the VM is not saved
beforehand, and data may be lost. (This is equivalent to selecting
the "Reset" item in the "Machine" menu of the GUI.)
VBoxManage controlvm <vm>
poweroff has the same effect on a virtual machine
as pulling the power cable on a real computer. Again, the state of
the VM is not saved beforehand, and data may be lost. (This is
equivalent to selecting the "Close" item in the "Machine" menu of
the GUI or pressing the window's close button, and then selecting
"Power off the machine" in the dialog.)
After this, the VM's state will be "Powered off". From there, it can be started again; see Section 8.12, “VBoxManage startvm”.
VBoxManage controlvm <vm>
savestate will save the current state of the VM to
disk and then stop the VM. (This is equivalent to selecting the
"Close" item in the "Machine" menu of the GUI or pressing the
window's close button, and then selecting "Save the machine state"
in the dialog.)
After this, the VM's state will be "Saved". From there, it can be started again; see Section 8.12, “VBoxManage startvm”.
VBoxManage controlvm "VM name" teleport
--hostname <name> --port <port> [--passwordfile
<file> | --password <password>] makes
the machine the source of a teleporting operation and initiates a
teleport to the given target. See Section 7.2, “Teleporting” for
an introduction. If the optional password is specified, it must match
the password that was given to the
modifyvm command for the target
machine; see Section 8.8.6, “Teleporting settings” for
details.
A few extra options are available with
controlvm that do not directly affect the
VM's running state:
The setlinkstate<1-N>
operation connects or disconnects virtual network cables from their
network interfaces.
nic<1-N>
null|nat|bridged|intnet|hostonly|generic: With this, you can
set, for each of the VM's virtual network cards, what type of
networking should be available. They can be not connected to the host
(null), use network address
translation (nat), bridged networking
(bridged) or communicate with other
virtual machines using internal networking
(intnet) or host-only networking
(hostonly) or access to rarely used
sub-modes
(generic). These options correspond
to the modes which are described in detail in Section 6.2, “Introduction to networking modes”.
With the "nictrace" options, you can optionally trace network traffic by dumping it to a file, for debugging purposes.
With nictrace<1-N>
on|off, you can enable network tracing for a
particular virtual network card.
If enabled, you must specify with
--nictracefile<1-N>
<filename> what file the trace should be
logged to.
nicpromisc<1-N>
deny|allow-vms|allow-all:
This allows you, for each of the VM's virtual network cards, to
specify how the promiscious mode is handled. This setting is only
relevant for bridged networking.
deny (default setting) hides
any traffic not intended for this VM.
allow-vms hides all host
traffic from this VM but allows the VM to see traffic from/to other
VMs.
allow-all removes this
restriction completely.
nicproperty<1-N>
<paramname>="paramvalue":
This option, in combination with "nicgenericdrv" allows you to
pass parameters to rarely-used network backends.
Those parameters are backend engine-specific, and are different between UDP Tunnel and the VDE backend drivers. For example, please see Section 6.8, “UDP Tunnel networking”.
The guestmemoryballoon
operation changes the size of the guest memory balloon, that is,
memory allocated by the VirtualBox Guest Additions from the guest
operating system and returned to the hypervisor for re-use by other
virtual machines. This must be specified in megabytes. For details,
see Section 4.9.1, “Memory ballooning”.
usbattach and
usbdettach make host USB devices
visible to the virtual machine on the fly, without the need for
creating filters first. The USB devices can be specified by UUID
(unique identifier) or by address on the host system.
You can use VBoxManage list
usbhost to locate this information.
clipboard
disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost|bidirectional:
With this setting, you can select if and how the guest or host
operating system's clipboard should be shared with the host or guest;
see Section 3.3, “General settings”. This requires that the Guest
Additions be installed in the virtual machine.
draganddrop
disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost|bidirectional:
With this setting, you can select the current drag and drop mode
being used between the host and the virtual machine;
see Section 4.4, “Drag and Drop”. This requires that the Guest
Additions be installed in the virtual machine.
vrde on|off lets you enable or
disable the VRDE server, if it is installed.
vrdeport default|<ports>
changes the port or a range of ports that the VRDE server can bind to;
"default" or "0" means port 3389, the standard port for RDP. For
details, see the description for the
--vrdeport option in Section 8.8.3, “Miscellaneous settings”.
setvideomodehint requests that
the guest system change to a particular video mode. This requires that
the Guest Additions be installed, and will not work for all guest
systems.
screenshotpng takes a screenshot
of the guest display and saves it in PNG format.
videocap on|off enables or disables
recording a VM session into a WebM/VP8 file.
videocapscreens all|<screen ID>
[<screen ID> ...]] allows to specify which screens of
the VM are being recorded. This setting
cannot be changed while video capturing is enabled. Each screen is recorded
into a separate file.
videocapfile <file> sets the filename
VirtualBox uses to save the recorded content. This setting cannot be changed
while video capturing is enabled.
videocapres <width> <height>
sets the resolution (in pixels) of the recorded video. This setting cannot be
changed while video capturing is enabled.
videocaprate <rate> sets the
bitrate in kilobits (kb) per second. Increasing this value makes the video
look better for the cost of an increased file size. This setting cannot be
changed while video capturing is enabled.
videocapfps <fps> sets the
maximum number of frames per second (FPS) to be recorded. Frames with a
higher frequency will be skipped. Reducing this value increases the number
of skipped frames and reduces the file size. This setting cannot be changed
while video capturing is enabled.
videocapmaxtime <ms> sets
the maximum time in milliseconds the video capturing will be enabled
since activation.
The capturing stops when the defined time interval has elapsed. If this
value is zero the capturing is not limited by time. This setting cannot
be changed while video capturing is enabled.
videocapmaxsize <MB> limits
the maximum size of the captured video file (in MB). The capturing stops
when the file size has reached the specified size. If this value is zero
the capturing will not be limited by file size. This setting cannot be
changed while video capturing is enabled.
videocapopts <key=value>[,<key=value> ...]
can be used to specify additional video capturing options. These options
only are for advanced users and must be specified in a comma-separated
key=value format, e.g. foo=bar,a=b.
This setting cannot be changed while video capturing is enabled.
The setcredentials operation is
used for remote logons in Windows guests. For details, please refer to
Section 9.2, “Automated guest logons”.
plugcpu|unplugcpu
<id>: If CPU hot-plugging is enabled, this adds
a virtual CPU to the virtual machines (or removes one).
<id> specifies the index of
the virtual CPU to be added or removed and must be a number from 0
to the maximum no. of CPUs configured. CPU 0 can never be removed.
The cpuexecutioncap
<1-100>: This operation controls how much cpu
time a virtual CPU can use. A value of 50 implies a single virtual CPU
can use up to 50% of a single host CPU.
This command discards the saved state of a virtual machine which is not currently running, which will cause its operating system to restart next time you start it. This is the equivalent of pulling out the power cable on a physical machine, and should be avoided if possible.
If you have a saved state file (.sav)
that is separate from the VM configuration, you can use this command to
"adopt" the file. This will change the VM to saved state and when you
start it, VirtualBox will attempt to restore it from the saved state file
you indicated. This command should only be used in special setups.
This command is used to control snapshots from the command line. A snapshot consists of a complete copy of the virtual machine settings, copied at the time when the snapshot was taken, and optionally a virtual machine saved state file if the snapshot was taken while the machine was running. After a snapshot has been taken, VirtualBox creates differencing hard disk for each normal hard disk associated with the machine so that when a snapshot is restored, the contents of the virtual machine's virtual hard disks can be quickly reset by simply dropping the pre-existing differencing files.
The take operation takes a snapshot
of the current state of the virtual machine. You must supply a name for
the snapshot and can optionally supply a description. The new snapshot is
inserted into the snapshots tree as a child of the current snapshot and
then becomes the new current snapshot. The
--description parameter allows to
describe the snapshot. If --live
is specified, the VM will not be stopped during the snapshot creation
(live smapshotting).
The delete operation deletes a
snapshot (specified by name or by UUID). This can take a while to finish
since the differencing images associated with the snapshot might need to
be merged with their child differencing images.
The restore operation will restore
the given snapshot (specified by name or by UUID) by resetting the virtual
machine's settings and current state to that of the snapshot. The previous
current state of the machine will be lost. After this, the given snapshot
becomes the new "current" snapshot so that subsequent snapshots are
inserted under the snapshot from which was restored.
The restorecurrent operation is a
shortcut to restore the current snapshot (i.e. the snapshot from which the
current state is derived). This subcommand is equivalent to using the
"restore" subcommand with the name or UUID of the current snapshot, except
that it avoids the extra step of determining that name or UUID.
With the edit operation, you can
change the name or description of an existing snapshot.
With the showvminfo operation, you
can view the virtual machine settings that were stored with an existing
snapshot.
This commands removes a hard disk, DVD or floppy image from a VirtualBox media registry.[38]
Optionally, you can request that the image be deleted. You will get appropriate diagnostics that the deletion failed, however the image will become unregistered in any case.
This command attaches/modifies/removes a storage medium connected to
a storage controller that was previously added with the
storagectl command (see the previous
section). The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage storageattach <uuid|vmname>
--storagectl <name>
[--port <number>]
[--device <number>]
[--type dvddrive|hdd|fdd]
[--medium none|emptydrive|
<uuid>|<filename>|host:<drive>|iscsi]
[--mtype normal|writethrough|immutable|shareable]
[--comment <text>]
[--setuuid <uuid>]
[--setparentuuid <uuid>]
[--passthrough on|off]
[--tempeject on|off]
[--nonrotational on|off]
[--discard on|off]
[--bandwidthgroup name|none]
[--forceunmount]
[--server <name>|<ip>]
[--target <target>]
[--tport <port>]
[--lun <lun>]
[--encodedlun <lun>]
[--username <username>]
[--password <password>]
[--initiator <initiator>]
[--intnet]A number of parameters are commonly required; the ones at the end of the list are required only for iSCSI targets (see below).
The common parameters are:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM Name. Mandatory.
--storagectlName of the storage controller. Mandatory. The list of the
storage controllers currently attached to a VM can be obtained
with VBoxManage showvminfo; see
Section 8.5, “VBoxManage showvminfo”.
--portThe number of the storage controller's port which is to be modified. Mandatory, unless the storage controller has only a single port.
--deviceThe number of the port's device which is to be modified. Mandatory, unless the storage controller has only a single device per port.
--typeDefine the type of the drive to which the medium is being
attached/detached/modified. This argument can only be omitted if
the type of medium can be determined from either the medium given
with the --medium argument or
from a previous medium attachment.
--mediumSpecifies what is to be attached. The following values are supported:
"none": Any existing device should be removed from the given slot.
"emptydrive": For a virtual DVD or floppy drive only, this makes the device slot behaves like a removeable drive into which no media has been inserted.
"additions": For a virtual DVD drive only, this attaches the VirtualBox Guest Additions image to the given device slot.
If a UUID is specified, it must be the UUID of a storage medium that is already known to VirtualBox (e.g. because it has been attached to another virtual machine). See Section 8.4, “VBoxManage list” for how to list known media. This medium is then attached to the given device slot.
If a filename is specified, it must be the full path of an existing disk image (ISO, RAW, VDI, VMDK or other), which is then attached to the given device slot.
"host:<drive>": For a virtual DVD or floppy drive only, this connects the given device slot to the specified DVD or floppy drive on the host computer.
"iscsi": For virtual hard disks only, this allows for specifying an iSCSI target. In this case, more parameters must be given; see below.
Some of the above changes, in particular for removeable media (floppies and CDs/DVDs), can be effected while a VM is running. Others (device changes or changes in hard disk device slots) require the VM to be powered off.
--mtypeDefines how this medium behaves with respect to snapshots and write operations. See Section 5.4, “Special image write modes” for details.
--commentAny description that you want to have stored with this medium (optional; for example, for an iSCSI target, "Big storage server downstairs"). This is purely descriptive and not needed for the medium to function correctly.
--setuuid, --setparentuuidModifies the UUID or parent UUID of a medium before
attaching it to a VM. This is an expert option. Inappropriate use
can make the medium unusable or lead to broken VM configurations
if any other VM is referring to the same media already. The most
frequently used variant is --setuuid "", which assigns
a new (random) UUID to an image. This is useful to resolve the
duplicate UUID errors if one duplicated an image using file copy
utilities.
--passthroughFor a virtual DVD drive only, you can enable DVD writing support (currently experimental; see Section 5.9, “CD/DVD support”).
--tempejectFor a virtual DVD drive only, you can configure the behavior for guest-triggered medium eject. If this is set to "on", the eject has only temporary effects. If the VM is powered off and restarted the originally configured medium will be still in the drive.
--nonrotationalThis switch allows to enable the non-rotational flag for virtual hard disks. Some guests (i.e. Windows 7+) treat such disks like SSDs and don't perform disk fragmentation on such media.
--bandwidthgroupSets the bandwidth group to use for the given device; see Section 5.8, “Limiting bandwidth for disk images”.
--forceunmountFor a virtual DVD or floppy drive only, this forcibly unmounts the DVD/CD/Floppy or mounts a new DVD/CD/Floppy even if the previous one is locked down by the guest for reading. Again, see Section 5.9, “CD/DVD support” for details.
When "iscsi" is used with the
--medium parameter for iSCSI support --
see Section 5.10, “iSCSI servers” --, additional parameters must or can
be used:
--serverThe host name or IP address of the iSCSI target; required.
--targetTarget name string. This is determined by the iSCSI target and used to identify the storage resource; required.
--tportTCP/IP port number of the iSCSI service on the target (optional).
--lunLogical Unit Number of the target resource (optional). Often, this value is zero.
--username, --passwordUsername and password (initiator secret) for target authentication, if required (optional).
Username and password are stored without encryption (i.e. in clear text) in the XML machine configuration file if no settings password is provided. When a settings password was specified the first time, the password is stored encrypted.
--intnetIf specified, connect to the iSCSI target via Internal Networking. This needs further configuration which is described in Section 9.9.3, “Access iSCSI targets via Internal Networking”.
This command attaches/modifies/removes a storage controller. After
this, virtual media can be attached to the controller with the
storageattach command (see the next
section).
The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage storagectl <uuid|vmname>
--name <name>
[--add <ide/sata/scsi/floppy>]
[--controller <LsiLogic|LSILogicSAS|BusLogic|
IntelAhci|PIIX3|PIIX4|ICH6|I82078|usb>]
[--sataportcount <1-30>]
[--hostiocache on|off]
[--bootable on|off]
[--remove]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM Name. Mandatory.
--nameName of the storage controller. Mandatory.
--addDefine the type of the system bus to which the storage controller must be connected.
--controllerAllows to choose the type of chipset being emulated for the given storage controller.
--sataportcountThis determines how many ports the SATA controller should support.
--hostiocacheConfigures the use of the host I/O cache for all disk images attached to this storage controller. For details, please see Section 5.7, “Host I/O caching”.
--bootableSelects whether this controller is bootable.
--removeRemoves the storage controller from the VM config.
This command creates/deletes/modifies/shows bandwidth groups of the given virtual machine:
VBoxManage bandwidthctl <uuid|vmname>
add <name> --type disk|network --limit <megabytes per second>[k|m|g|K|M|G] |
set <name> --limit <megabytes per second>[k|m|g|K|M|G] |
remove <name> |
list [--machinereadable]The following subcommands are available:
add, creates a new bandwidth
group of given type.
set, modifies the limit for an
existing bandwidth group.
remove, destroys a bandwidth
group.
list, shows all bandwidth groups
defined for the given VM.
The parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM Name. Mandatory.
--nameName of the bandwidth group. Mandatory.
--typeType of the bandwidth group. Mandatory. Two types are
supported: disk and
network. See
Section 5.8, “Limiting bandwidth for disk images” or
Section 6.10, “Limiting bandwidth for network I/O” for a description of a
particular type.
--limitSpecifies the limit for the given group. Can be changed
while the VM is running. The default unit is megabytes per
second. The unit can be changed by specifying one of the
following suffixes: k for kilobits/s, m for megabits/s, g for gigabits/s, K for kilobytes/s, M for megabytes/s, G for gigabytes/s.
The network bandwidth limits apply only to the traffic being sent by virtual machines. The traffic being received by VMs is unlimited.
To remove a bandwidth group it must not be referenced by any disks or adapters in running VM.
This command shows information about a virtual hard disk image, notably its size, its size on disk, its type and the virtual machines which use it.
For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the "showvdiinfo" command is also supported and mapped internally to the "showhdinfo" command.
The disk image must be specified either by its UUID (if the medium
is registered) or by its filename. Registered images can be listed by
VBoxManage list hdds (see Section 8.4, “VBoxManage list”
for more information). A filename must be specified as valid path, either
as an absolute path or as a relative path starting from the current
directory.
This command creates a new virtual hard disk image. The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage createhd --filename <filename>
--size <megabytes>
[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD] (default: VDI)
[--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]where the parameters mean:
--filenameAllows to choose a file name. Mandatory.
--sizeAllows to define the image capacity, in 1 MiB units. Mandatory.
--formatAllows to choose a file format for the output file different from the file format of the input file.
--variantAllows to choose a file format variant for the output file. It is a comma-separated list of variant flags. Not all combinations are supported, and specifying inconsistent flags will result in an error message.
For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the "createvdi" command is also supported and mapped internally to the "createhd" command.
With the modifyhd command, you can
change the characteristics of a disk image after it has been
created:
VBoxManage modifyhd <uuid|filename>
[--type normal|writethrough|immutable|shareable|
readonly|multiattach]
[--autoreset on|off]
[--compact]
[--resize <megabytes>|--resizebyte <bytes>]Despite the "hd" in the subcommand name, the command works with all disk images, not only hard disks. For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the "modifyvdi" command is also supported and mapped internally to the "modifyhd" command.
The disk image to modify must be specified either by its UUID
(if the medium is registered) or by its filename. Registered images
can be listed by VBoxManage list hdds
(see Section 8.4, “VBoxManage list” for more information).
A filename must be specified as valid path, either as an absolute path
or as a relative path starting from the current directory.
The following options are available:
With the --type argument, you
can change the type of an existing image between the normal,
immutable, write-through and other modes; see Section 5.4, “Special image write modes” for details.
For immutable (differencing) hard disks only, the
--autoreset on|off option
determines whether the disk is automatically reset on every VM
startup (again, see Section 5.4, “Special image write modes”). The default
is "on".
With the --compact option,
can be used to compact disk images, i.e. remove blocks that only
contains zeroes. This will shrink a dynamically allocated image
again; it will reduce the physical size of the
image without affecting the logical size of the virtual disk.
Compaction works both for base images and for diff images created as
part of a snapshot.
For this operation to be effective, it is required that free
space in the guest system first be zeroed out using a suitable
software tool. For Windows guests, you can use the
sdelete tool provided by Microsoft.
Execute sdelete -z in the guest to
zero the free disk space before compressing the virtual disk
image. For Linux, use the zerofree utility which
supports ext2/ext3 filesystems. For Mac OS X guests, use the
Erase Free Space feature of the built-in
Disk Utility. Use
Zero Out Data there.
Please note that compacting is currently only available for VDI images. A similar effect can be achieved by zeroing out free blocks and then cloning the disk to any other dynamically allocated format. You can use this workaround until compacting is also supported for disk formats other than VDI.
The --resize x option (where x
is the desired new total space in megabytes)
allows you to change the capacity of an existing image; this adjusts the
logical size of a virtual disk without affecting
the physical size much.[39] This currently works only for VDI and VHD formats, and only
for the dynamically allocated variants, and can only be used to expand
(not shrink) the capacity.
For example, if you originally created a 10G disk which is now full,
you can use the --resize 15360
command to change the capacity to 15G (15,360MB) without having to create a new
image and copy all data from within a virtual machine. Note however that
this only changes the drive capacity; you will typically next need to use
a partition management tool inside the guest to adjust the main partition
to fill the drive.
The --resizebyte x
option does almost the same thing, except that x is expressed in bytes
instead of megabytes.
This command duplicates a registered virtual hard disk image to a new image file with a new unique identifier (UUID). The new image can be transferred to another host system or imported into VirtualBox again using the Virtual Media Manager; see Section 5.3, “The Virtual Media Manager” and Section 5.6, “Cloning disk images”. The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage clonehd <uuid|inutfile> <uuid|outputfile>
[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD|RAW|<other>]
[--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]
[--existing]The disk image to clone as well as the target image must be described
either by its UUIDs (if the mediums are registered) or by its filename.
Registered images can be listed by VBoxManage list hdds
(see Section 8.4, “VBoxManage list” for more information).
A filename must be specified as valid path, either as an absolute path or
as a relative path starting from the current directory.
The following options are available:
--formatAllow to choose a file format for the output file different from the file format of the input file.
--variantAllow to choose a file format variant for the output file. It is a comma-separated list of variant flags. Not all combinations are supported, and specifying inconsistent flags will result in an error message.
--existingPerform the clone operation to an already existing destination medium. Only the portion of the source medium which fits into the destination medium is copied. This means if the destination medium is smaller than the source only a part of it is copied, and if the destination medium is larger than the source the remaining part of the destination medium is unchanged.
For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the "clonevdi" command is also supported and mapped internally to the "clonehd" command.
This command converts a raw disk image to a VirtualBox Disk Image (VDI) file. The syntax is as follows:
VBoxManage convertfromraw <filename> <outputfile>
[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD]
[--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]
[--uuid <uuid>]
VBoxManage convertfromraw stdin <outputfile> <bytes>
[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD]
[--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX]
[--uuid <uuid>]where the parameters mean:
--bytesThe size of the image file, in bytes, provided through stdin.
--formatSelect the disk image format to create. Default is VDI.
--variantAllow to choose a file format variant for the output file. It is a comma-separated list of variant flags. Not all combinations are supported, and specifying inconsistent flags will result in an error message.
--uuidAllow to specifiy the UUID of the output file.
The second form forces VBoxManage to read the content for the disk image from standard input (useful for using that command in a pipe).
For compatibility with earlier versions of VirtualBox, the "convertdd" command is also supported and mapped internally to the "convertfromraw" command.
These commands let you attach and retrieve string data to a virtual
machine or to a VirtualBox configuration (by specifying
global instead of a virtual machine
name). You must specify a key (as a text string) to associate the data
with, which you can later use to retrieve it. For example:
VBoxManage setextradata Fedora5 installdate 2006.01.01 VBoxManage setextradata SUSE10 installdate 2006.02.02
would associate the string "2006.01.01" with the key installdate for the virtual machine Fedora5, and "2006.02.02" on the machine SUSE10. You could retrieve the information as follows:
VBoxManage getextradata Fedora5 installdate
which would return
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 5.0.10 (C) 2005-2015 Oracle Corporation All rights reserved. Value: 2006.01.01
To remove a key, the setextradata
command must be run without specifying data (only the key), for example:
VBoxManage setextradata Fedora5 installdate
This command is used to change global settings which affect the entire VirtualBox installation. Some of these correspond to the settings in the "Global settings" dialog in the graphical user interface. The following properties are available:
machinefolderThis specifies the default folder in which virtual machine definitions are kept; see Section 10.1, “Where VirtualBox stores its files” for details.
hwvirtexclusiveThis specifies whether VirtualBox will make exclusive use of the hardware virtualization extensions (Intel VT-x or AMD-V) of the host system's processor; see Section 10.3, “Hardware vs. software virtualization”. If you wish to share these extensions with other hypervisors running at the same time, you must disable this setting. Doing so has negative performance implications.
vrdeauthlibraryThis specifies which library to use when "external" authentication has been selected for a particular virtual machine; see Section 7.1.5, “RDP authentication” for details.
websrvauthlibraryThis specifies which library the web service uses to authenticate users. For details about the VirtualBox web service, please refer to the separate VirtualBox SDK reference (see Chapter 11, VirtualBox programming interfaces).
vrdeextpackThis specifies which library implements the VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension.
loghistorycountThis selects how many rotated (old) VM logs are kept.
autostartdbpathThis selects the path to the autostart database. See Section 9.24, “Starting virtual machines during system boot”.
defaultfrontendThis selects the global default VM frontend setting. See Section 8.12, “VBoxManage startvm”.
logginglevelThis configures the VBoxSVC release logging details.[40]
The usbfilter commands are used for
working with USB filters in virtual machines, or global filters which
affect the whole VirtualBox setup. Global filters are applied before
machine-specific filters, and may be used to prevent devices from being
captured by any virtual machine. Global filters are always applied in a
particular order, and only the first filter which fits a device is
applied. So for example, if the first global filter says to hold (make
available) a particular Kingston memory stick device and the second to
ignore all Kingston devices, that memory stick will be available to any
machine with an appropriate filter, but no other Kingston device
will.
When creating a USB filter using usbfilter
add, you must supply three or four mandatory parameters.
The index specifies the position in the list at which the filter should be
placed. If there is already a filter at that position, then it and the
following ones will be shifted back one place. Otherwise the new filter
will be added onto the end of the list. The
target parameter selects the virtual
machine that the filter should be attached to or use "global" to apply it
to all virtual machines. name is a name
for the new filter and for global filters,
action says whether to allow machines
access to devices that fit the filter description ("hold") or not to give
them access ("ignore"). In addition, you should specify parameters to
filter by. You can find the parameters for devices attached to your system
using VBoxManage list usbhost. Finally,
you can specify whether the filter should be active, and for local
filters, whether they are for local devices, remote (over an RDP
connection) or either.
When you modify a USB filter using usbfilter
modify, you must specify the filter by index (see the
output of VBoxManage list usbfilters to
find global filter indexes and that of VBoxManage
showvminfo to find indexes for individual machines) and
by target, which is either a virtual machine or "global". The properties
which can be changed are the same as for usbfilter
add. To remove a filter, use usbfilter
remove and specify the index and the target.
This command allows you to share folders on the host computer with guest operating systems. For this, the guest systems must have a version of the VirtualBox Guest Additions installed which supports this functionality.
Shared folders are described in detail in Section 4.3, “Shared folders”.
The "guestproperty" commands allow you to get or set properties of a running virtual machine. Please see Section 4.7, “Guest properties” for an introduction. As explained there, guest properties are arbitrary key/value string pairs which can be written to and read from by either the guest or the host, so they can be used as a low-volume communication channel for strings, provided that a guest is running and has the Guest Additions installed. In addition, a number of values whose keys begin with "/VirtualBox/" are automatically set and maintained by the Guest Additions.
The following subcommands are available (where
<vm>, in each case, can either be a
VM name or a VM UUID, as with the other VBoxManage commands):
enumerate <vm> [--patterns
<pattern>]: This lists all the guest
properties that are available for the given VM, including the value.
This list will be very limited if the guest's service process cannot
be contacted, e.g. because the VM is not running or the Guest
Additions are not installed.
If --patterns <pattern>
is specified, it acts as a filter to only list properties that match
the given pattern. The pattern can contain the following wildcard
characters:
* (asterisk):
represents any number of characters; for example,
"/VirtualBox*" would match
all properties beginning with "/VirtualBox".
? (question mark):
represents a single arbitrary character; for example,
"fo?" would match both "foo"
and "for".
| (pipe symbol): can be
used to specify multiple alternative patterns; for example,
"s*|t*" would match anything
starting with either "s" or "t".
get <vm> <property>
: This
retrieves the value of a single property only. If the property
cannot be found (e.g. because the guest is not running), this will
print
No value set!
set <vm> <property> [<value>
[--flags <flags>]]: This allows you to set a
guest property by specifying the key and value. If
<value> is omitted, the
property is deleted. With --flags
you can optionally specify additional behavior (you can combine
several by separating them with commas):
TRANSIENT: the value
will not be stored with the VM data when the VM exits;
TRANSRESET: the value
will be deleted as soon as the VM restarts and/or exits;
RDONLYGUEST: the value
can only be changed by the host, but the guest can only read
it;
RDONLYHOST: reversely,
the value can only be changed by the guest, but the host can
only read it;
READONLY: a combination
of the two, the value cannot be changed at all.
wait <vm> <pattern> --timeout
<timeout>: This waits for a particular value
described by "pattern" to change or to be deleted or created. The
pattern rules are the same as for the "enumerate" subcommand
above.
delete <vm> <property>
: Deletes a formerly set guest property.
The guestcontrol commands allow you
to control certain things inside a guest from the host. Please see Section 4.8, “Guest control” for an introduction.
There are two sets of subcommands here. The first set requires guest credentials to be specified, the second set does not.
The first set of subcommands are on the following form:
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> <sub-command>
[-v|--verbose] [-q|quiet] [--username <name>] [--domain <domain> ]
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>] ...
and the second set are on the following form:
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> <sub-command>
[-v|--verbose] [-q|quiet] ...
where the common parameters are:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
--username <name>Name of the user the process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS. If not specified the host user name is used.
--domain <domain>User domain for windows guests, optional.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the specified user account to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the specified user account. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
-v|--verboseMakes the sub-command execution more noisy.
-q|--quietMakes the sub-command execution more quiet.
The first set of subcommands:
run,
allows you to execute a guest program waiting for it to complete and
forwarding stdout, stderr and stdin to/from the host.
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> run [common-options]
[--exe <path to executable>] [--timeout <msec>]
[-E|--putenv <NAME>[=<VALUE>]] [--unquoted-args]
[--ignore-operhaned-processes] [--no-profile]
[--no-wait-stdout|--wait-stdout]
[--no-wait-stderr|--wait-stderr]
[--dos2unix] [--unix2dos]
-- <program/arg0> [argument1] ... [argumentN]]
where the options are:
--exe "<path to program>"Guest path to the guest executable that should be executed.
in the guest, e.g.
C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe
--username <name>Name of the user the process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the user account specified to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the user account specified with
--username. If not given,
an empty password is assumed.
--dos2unixConverts output from DOS/Windows guests to UNIX-compatible line endings (CR + LF -> LF). Not implemented yet.
--environment
"<NAME>=<VALUE>"One or more environment variables to be set or unset.
By default, the new process in the guest will be
created with the standard environment of the guest OS. This
option allows for modifying that environment. To set/modify
a variable, a pair of
NAME=VALUE must be
specified; to unset a certain variable, the name with no
value must set, e.g.
NAME=.
Arguments containing spaces must be enclosed in
quotation marks. More than one
--environment at a time can
be specified to keep the command line tidy.
--timeout <msec>Value (in milliseconds) that specifies the time how long the started process is allowed to run and how long VBoxManage waits for getting output from that process. If no timeout is specified, VBoxManage will wait forever until the started process ends or an error occured.
--unix2dosConverts output from a UNIX/Linux guests to DOS-/Windows-compatible line endings (LF -> CR + LF). Not implemented yet.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
--wait-exitWaits until the process ends and outputs its exit code along with the exit reason/flags.
--wait-stdoutWaits until the process ends and outputs its exit code along with the exit reason/flags. While waiting VBoxManage retrieves the process output collected from stdout.
--wait-stderrWaits until the process ends and outputs its exit code along with the exit reason/flags. While waiting VBoxManage retrieves the process output collected from stderr.
[-- [<argument1s>] ... [<argumentNs>]]One or more arguments to pass to the process being executed.
Arguments containing spaces must be enclosed in quotation marks.
On Windows there are certain limitations for graphical applications; please see Chapter 14, Known limitations for more information.
Examples:
VBoxManage --nologo guestcontrol "My VM" execute --image "/bin/ls"
--username foo --passwordfile bar.txt --wait-exit --wait-stdout -- -l /usr
VBoxManage --nologo guestcontrol "My VM" execute --image "c:\\windows\\system32\\ipconfig.exe"
--username foo --passwordfile bar.txt --wait-exit --wait-stdoutNote that the double backslashes in the second example are only required on Unix hosts.
For certain commands a user name of an existing user account on the guest must be specified; anonymous executions are not supported for security reasons. A user account password, however, is optional and depends on the guest's OS security policy or rules. If no password is specified for a given user name, an empty password will be used. On certain OSes like Windows the security policy may needs to be adjusted in order to allow user accounts with an empty password set. Also, global domain rules might apply and therefore cannot be changed.
Starting at VirtualBox 4.1.2 guest process execution by default is limited to serve up to 5 guest processes at a time. If a new guest process gets started which would exceed this limit, the oldest not running guest process will be discarded in order to be able to run that new process. Also, retrieving output from this old guest process will not be possible anymore then. If all 5 guest processes are still active and running, starting a new guest process will result in an appropriate error message.
To raise or lower the guest process execution limit, either the guest
property /VirtualBox/GuestAdd/VBoxService/--control-procs-max-kept
or VBoxService' command line by specifying --control-procs-max-kept
needs to be modified. A restart of the guest OS is required afterwards. To serve unlimited
guest processes, a value of 0 needs to be set (not recommended).
copyto,
which allows copying
files from the host to the guest (only with installed Guest
Additions 4.0 and later).
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> copyto|cp
<guest source> <host dest> --username <name>
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>]
[--dryrun] [--follow] [--recursive] [--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
source on hostAbsolute path of source file(s) on host to copy over
to the guest, e.g.
C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe.
This also can be a wildcard expression, e.g.
C:\Windows\System32\*.dll
destination on guestAbsolute destination path on the guest, e.g.
C:\Temp
--username <name>Name of the user the copy process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the user account specified to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the user account specified with
--username. If not given,
an empty password is assumed.
--dryrunTells VBoxManage to only perform a dry run instead of really copying files to the guest.
--followEnables following symlinks on the host's source.
--recursiveRecursively copies files/directories of the specified source.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
--flags <flags>Additional flags to set. This is not used at the moment.
copyfrom,
which allows copying
files from the guest to the host (only with installed Guest
Additions 4.0 and later). It has the same parameters as
copyto above.
createdirectory,
which allows
copying files from the host to the guest (only with installed Guest
Additions 4.0 and later).
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> createdir[ectory]|mkdir|md
<guest directory>... --username <name>
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>]
[--parents] [--mode <mode>] [--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
directory to create on guestAbsolute path of directory/directories to create on
guest, e.g. D:\Foo\Bar.
Parent directories need to exist (e.g. in this example
D:\Foo) when switch
--parents is omitted. The
specified user must have appropriate rights to create the
specified directory.
--username <name>Name of the user the copy process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the user account specified to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the user account specified with
--username. If not given,
an empty password is assumed.
--parentsAlso creates not yet existing parent directories of
the specified directory, e.g. if the directory
D:\Foo of
D:\Foo\Bar does not exist
yet it will be created. Without specifying
--parent the action would
have failed.
--mode <mode>Sets the permission mode of the specified directory.
Only octal modes (e.g.
0755) are supported right
now.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
removedirectory,
which allows deletion of guest directories (only with installed Guest
Additions 4.3.2 and later).
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> removedir[ectory]|rmdir
<guest directory>... --username <name>
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>]
[--recursive|-R|-r] [--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
directory to remove on guestAbsolute path of directory/directories to remove on
guest, e.g. D:\Foo\Bar. The
specified user must have appropriate rights to delete the
specified guest directories.
--username <name>Name of the user the copy process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the user account specified to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the user account specified with
--username. If not given,
an empty password is assumed.
--recursiveRemove directories and their contents recursively.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
removefile,
which allows deletion of guest files (only with installed Guest
Additions 4.3.2 and later).
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> removefile|rm
<guest file>... --username <name>
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>]
[--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
file to remove on guestAbsolute path of a file/files to remove on
guest, e.g. D:\Foo\Bar\text.txt. The
specified user must have appropriate rights to delete the
specified guest files.
--username <name>Name of the user the copy process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the user account specified to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the user account specified with
--username. If not given,
an empty password is assumed.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
ren[ame]|mv,
which allows renaming of guest files and/or directories (only with installed Guest
Additions 4.3.2 and later).
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> ren[ame]|mv
<source>... <dest> --username <name>
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>]
[--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
sourceAbsolute path of one or more source(s) to move to destination. If more than one source is specified, destination must be an existing directory on the guest. The specified user must have appropriate rights to access source and destination files and directories.
destAbsolute path of the destination to move the source(s) to. This can be a directory or a file, depending if one or more sources have been specified. The specified user must have appropriate rights to access the destination file and directory.
--username <name>Name of the user the copy process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the user account specified to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the user account specified with
--username. If not given,
an empty password is assumed.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
createtemporary,
which allows
copying files from the host to the guest (only with installed Guest
Additions 4.2 and later).
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> createtemp[orary]|mktemp
<template> --username <name>
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>]
[--directory] [--secure] [--tmpdir <directory>]
[--domain <domain>] [--mode <mode>] [--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
templateA file name without a path and with at least three consecutive 'X' characters or ending in 'X'
--username <name>Name of the user the copy process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the user account specified to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the user account specified with
--username. If not given,
an empty password is assumed.
--directoryCreate a temporary directory instead of a file.
--secure
Secure creation. The file mode is fixed to
0755. And the operation
will fail if it cannot performed securely.
--tmpdir <directory>Directory where the file / directory is created. If not specified, the platform-specific temp directory is used.
--mode <mode>Sets the permission mode of the specified directory.
Only octal modes (e.g.
0755) are supported right
now.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
list,
which lists various guest control information such as open guest sessions,
guest processes and guest files.
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> list
<all|sessions|processes|files> [--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
all|sessions|processes|filesWhether to list guest sessions, guest processes, guest files or all information available. Mandatory.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
process kill,
which terminates specific guest processes of a guest session, based on either the
session's ID or the session's name.
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> process kill
--session-id <ID>
| --session-name <name or pattern>
[--verbose]
<PID> ... <PID n>where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
--session-idSpecifies the guest session to use by its ID.
--session-nameSpecifies the guest session to use by its name. Multiple sessions can be closed when specifying * or ? wildcards.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
<PID> ... <PID n>List of process identifiers (PIDs) to terminate.
[p[s]]kill,
which terminates specific guest processes of a guest session, based on either the
session's ID or the session's name.
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> process kill
--session-id <ID>
| --session-name <name or pattern>
[--verbose]
<PID> ... <PID n>where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
--session-idSpecifies the guest session to use by its ID.
--session-nameSpecifies the guest session to use by its name. Multiple sessions can be closed when specifying * or ? wildcards.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
<PID> ... <PID n>List of process identifiers (PIDs) to terminate.
session close,
which closes specific guest sessions, based on either the session's ID or the
session's name.
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> session close
--session-id <ID>
| --session-name <name or pattern>
| --all
[--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
--session-idClose a guest session specified by its ID.
--session-nameClose a guest session specified by its name. Multiple sessions can be closed when specifying * or ? wildcards.
--allClose all guest sessions.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
stat,
which displays file
or file system status on the guest.
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> stat
<file>... --username <name>
[--passwordfile <file> | --password <password>]
[--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
file element(s) to check on guestAbsolute path of directory/directories to check on
guest, e.g. /home/foo/a.out.
The specified user must have appropriate rights to access
the given file element(s).
--username <name>Name of the user the copy process should run under. This user must exist on the guest OS.
--passwordfile <file>Password of the user account specified to be read from the given file. If not given, an empty password is assumed.
--password <password>Password of the user account specified with
--username. If not given,
an empty password is assumed.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
updateadditions,
which allows
for updating an already installed Guest Additions version on the
guest (only already installed Guest Additions 4.0 and later).
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> updateadditions
[--source "<guest additions .ISO file to use>"] [--verbose]
[--wait-start] [-- [<argument1>] ... [<argumentN>]]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
--source "<guest additions .ISO file to
use>"Full path to an alternative VirtualBox Guest Additions .ISO file to use for the Guest Additions update.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
--wait-startStarts the regular updating process and waits until the actual Guest Additions update inside the guest was started. This can be necessary due to needed interaction with the guest OS during the installation phase.
When omitting this flag VBoxManage will wait for the whole Guest Additions update to complete.
[-- [<argument1s>] ... [<argumentNs>]]Optional command line arguments to use for the Guest Additions installer. Useful for retrofitting features which weren't installed before on the guest.
Arguments containing spaces must be enclosed in quotation marks.
watch,
which prints current guest control activity.
VBoxManage guestcontrol <uuid|vmname> watch
[--verbose]where the parameters mean:
uuid|vmnameThe VM UUID or VM name. Mandatory.
--verboseTells VBoxManage to be more verbose.
This command supports monitoring the usage of system resources.
Resources are represented by various metrics associated with the host
system or a particular VM. For example, the host system has a
CPU/Load/User metric that shows the
percentage of time CPUs spend executing in user mode over a specific
sampling period.
Metric data is collected and retained internally; it may be
retrieved at any time with the VBoxManage metrics
query subcommand. The data is available as long as the
background VBoxSVC process is alive. That
process terminates shortly after all VMs and frontends have been
closed.
By default no metrics are collected at all. Metrics collection does
not start until VBoxManage metrics setup
is invoked with a proper sampling interval and the number of metrics to be
retained. The interval is measured in seconds. For example, to enable
collecting the host processor and memory usage metrics every second and
keeping the 5 most current samples, the following command can be
used:
VBoxManage metrics setup --period 1 --samples 5 host CPU/Load,RAM/Usage
Metric collection can only be enabled for started VMs. Collected
data and collection settings for a particular VM will disappear as soon as
it shuts down. Use VBoxManage metrics list
subcommand to see which metrics are currently available.
You can also use --list option with any
subcommand that modifies metric settings to find out which metrics were
affected.
Note that the VBoxManage metrics
setup subcommand discards all samples that may have been
previously collected for the specified set of objects and metrics.
To enable or disable metrics collection without discarding the data
VBoxManage metrics enable and
VBoxManage metrics disable subcommands
can be used. Note that these subcommands expect metrics, not submetrics,
like CPU/Load or RAM/Usage as parameters. In
other words enabling CPU/Load/User while disabling
CPU/Load/Kernel is not supported.
The host and VMs have different sets of associated metrics.
Available metrics can be listed with VBoxManage metrics
list subcommand.
A complete metric name may include an aggregate function. The name
has the following form:
Category/Metric[/SubMetric][:aggregate].
For example, RAM/Usage/Free:min stands
for the minimum amount of available memory over all retained data if
applied to the host object.
Subcommands may apply to all objects and metrics or can be limited
to one object or/and a list of metrics. If no objects or metrics are given
in the parameters, the subcommands will apply to all available metrics of
all objects. You may use an asterisk
("*") to explicitly specify that the
command should be applied to all objects or metrics. Use "host" as the
object name to limit the scope of the command to host-related metrics. To
limit the scope to a subset of metrics, use a metric list with names
separated by commas.
For example, to query metric data on the CPU time spent in user and kernel modes by the virtual machine named "test", you can use the following command:
VBoxManage metrics query test CPU/Load/User,CPU/Load/Kernel
The following list summarizes the available subcommands:
listThis subcommand shows the parameters of the currently existing metrics. Note that VM-specific metrics are only available when a particular VM is running.
setupThis subcommand sets the interval between taking two samples
of metric data and the number of samples retained internally. The
retained data is available for displaying with the
query subcommand. The --list
option shows which metrics have been modified as
the result of the command execution.
enableThis subcommand "resumes" data collection after it has been
stopped with disable subcommand. Note that specifying
submetrics as parameters will not enable underlying metrics. Use
--list to find out if the command
did what was expected.
disableThis subcommand "suspends" data collection without affecting
collection parameters or collected data. Note that specifying
submetrics as parameters will not disable underlying metrics. Use
--list to find out if the command
did what was expected.
queryThis subcommand retrieves and displays the currently retained metric data.
The query subcommand does not remove or
"flush" retained data. If you query often enough you will see
how old samples are gradually being "phased out" by new
samples.
collectThis subcommand sets the interval between taking two samples
of metric data and the number of samples retained internally. The
collected data is displayed periodically until Ctrl-C is pressed
unless the --detach option is
specified. With the --detach
option, this subcommand operates the same way as setup
does. The --list option shows which
metrics match the specified filter.
With "hostonlyif" you can change the IP configuration of a host-only network interface. For a description of host-only networking, please refer to Section 6.7, “Host-only networking”. Each host-only interface is identified by a name and can either use the internal DHCP server or a manual IP configuration (both IP4 and IP6).
The following list summarizes the available subcommands:
ipconfig "<name>"Configure a hostonly interface
createCeates a new vboxnet<N> interface on the host OS. This command is essential before you can attach VMs to host-only network.
remove vboxnet<N>Removes a vboxnet<N> interface from the host OS.
The "dhcpserver" commands allow you to control the DHCP server that is built into VirtualBox. You may find this useful when using internal or host-only networking. (Theoretically, you can enable it for a bridged network as well, but that will likely cause conflicts with other DHCP servers in your physical network.)
Use the following command line options:
If you use internal networking for a virtual network adapter
of a virtual machine, use VBoxManage dhcpserver add
--netname <network_name>, where
<network_name> is the same
network name you used with VBoxManage modifyvm
<vmname> --intnet<X>
<network_name>.
If you use host-only networking for a virtual network adapter
of a virtual machine, use VBoxManage dhcpserver add
--ifname <hostonly_if_name> instead, where
<hostonly_if_name> is the
same host-only interface name you used with
VBoxManage modifyvm <vmname>
--hostonlyadapter<X>
<hostonly_if_name>.
Alternatively, you can also use the --netname option as with
internal networks if you know the host-only network's name; you can
see the names with VBoxManage list
hostonlyifs (see Section 8.4, “VBoxManage list”
above).
The following additional parameters are required when first adding a DHCP server:
With --ip, specify the IP
address of the DHCP server itself.
With --netmask, specify the
netmask of the network.
With --lowerip and
--upperip, you can specify the
lowest and highest IP address, respectively, that the DHCP server
will hand out to clients.
Finally, you must specify --enable
or the DHCP server will be created in the disabled state, doing
nothing.
After this, VirtualBox will automatically start the DHCP server for given internal or host-only network as soon as the first virtual machine which uses that network is started.
Reversely, use VBoxManage dhcpserver
remove with the given --netname
<network_name> or --ifname
<hostonly_if_name> to remove the DHCP server again
for the given internal or host-only network.
To modify the settings of a DHCP server created earlier with
VBoxManage dhcpserver add, you can use
VBoxManage dhcpserver modify for a given
network or host-only interface name.
Introspection and guest debugging.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> show [[--human-readable] | [--sh-export] | [--sh-eval] | [--cmd-set]] [settings-item...]
The "debugvm" commands are for experts who want to tinker with the exact details of virtual machine execution. Like the VM debugger described in Section 12.1.3, “The built-in VM debugger”, these commands are only useful if you are very familiar with the details of the PC architecture and how to debug software.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> dumpvmcore [--filename=name]
Creates a system dump file of the specified VM. This file will have the standard ELF core format (with custom sections); see Section 12.1.4, “VM core format”.
This corresponds to the writecore command in the debugger.
--filename=filename
The name of the output file.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> info <item> [args...]
Displays info items relating to the VMM, device emulations and associated drivers.
This corresponds to the info command in the debugger.
info
Name of the info item to display. The special name
help will list all the available info items and
hints about optional arguments.
args
Optional argument string for the info item handler. Most info items does not take any extra arguments. Arguments not recognized are generally ignored.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> injectnmi
Causes a non-maskable interrupt (NMI) to be injected into the guest. This might be useful for certain debugging scenarios. What happens exactly is dependent on the guest operating system, but an NMI can crash the whole guest operating system. Do not use unless you know what you're doing.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> log [[--release] | [--debug]] [group-settings...]
Changes the group settings for either debug (--debug)
or release (--release) logger of the VM process.
The group-settings are typically strings on the form
em.e.f.l, hm=~0
and -em.f. Basic wildcards are supported for
group matching. The all group is an alias for
all the groups.
Please do keep in mind that the group settings are applied as modifications to the current ones.
This corresponds to the log command in the debugger.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> logdest [[--release] | [--debug]] [destinations...]
Changes the destination settings for either debug (--debug)
or release (--release) logger of the VM process. For details
on the destination format, the best source is src/VBox/Runtime/common/log/log.cpp.
The destinations is one or more mnemonics, optionally
prefixed by "no" to disable them. Some of them take values after a ":" or "="
separator. Multiple mnemonics can be separated by space or given as separate
arguments on the command line.
List of available destination:
file[=file], nofile
Specifies a log file. It no filname is given, one will be generated based on the current UTC time and VM process name and placed in the current directory of the VM process. Note that this will currently not have any effect if the log file has already been opened.
dir=directory, nodir
Specifies the output directory for log files. Note that this will currently not have any effect if the log file has already been opened.
history=count, nohistory
A non-zero value enables log historization, with the value specifying how many old log files to keep.
histsize=bytes
The max size of a log file before it is historized. Default is infinite.
histtime=seconds
The max age (in seconds) of a log file before it is historized. Default is infinite.
ringbuffer, noringbuffer
Only log to the log buffer until an explicit flush (e.g. via an assertion) occurs. This is fast and saves diskspace.
stdout, nostdout
Write the log content to standard output.
stdout, nostdout
Write the log content to standard error.
debugger, nodebugger
Write the log content to the debugger, if supported by the host OS.
com, nocom
Writes logging to the COM port. This is only applicable for raw-mode and ring-0 logging.
user, nouser
Custom destination which has no meaning to VM processes..
This corresponds to the logdest command in the debugger.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> logflags [[--release] | [--debug]] [flags...]
Changes the flags on either debug (--debug) or release
(--release) logger of the VM process. Please note that the
modifications are applied onto the existing changes, they are not replacing them.
The flags are a list of flag mnemonics, optionally
prefixed by a "no", "!", "~" or "-" to negate their meaning. The "+" prefix
can be used to undo previous negation or use as a separator, though better use
whitespace or separate arguments for that.
List of log flag mnemonics, with their counter form where applicable (asterisk indicates defaults):
enabled*, disabled
Enables or disables logging.
buffered, unbuffered*
Enabling buffering of log output before it hits the destinations.
writethrough(/writethru)
Whether to open the destination file with writethru buffering settings or not.
flush
Enables flushing of the output file (to disk) after each log statement.
lockcnts
Prefix each log line with lock counts for the current thread.
cpuid
Prefix each log line with the ID of the current CPU.
pid
Prefix each log line with the current process ID.
flagno
Prefix each log line with the numberic flags corresponding to the log statement.
flag
Prefix each log line with the flag mnemonics corresponding to the log statement.
groupno
Prefix each log line with the log group number for the log statement producing it.
group
Prefix each log line with the log group name for the log statement producing it.
tid
Prefix each log line with the current thread identifier.
thread
Prefix each log line with the current thread name.
time
Prefix each log line with the current UTC wall time.
timeprog
Prefix each log line with the current monotonic time since the start of the program.
msprog
Prefix each log line with the current monotonic timestamp value in milliseconds since the start of the program.
ts
Prefix each log line with the current monotonic timestamp value in nanoseconds.
tsc
Prefix each log line with the current CPU timestamp counter (TSC) value.
rel, abs*
Selects the whether ts and
tsc prefixes should be displayed as relative to the
previous log line or as absolute time.
hex*, dec
Selects the whether the ts and
tsc prefixes should be formatted as hexadecimal
or decimal.
custom
Custom log prefix, has by default no meaning for VM processes.
usecrlf, uself*
Output with DOS style (CRLF) or just UNIX style (LF) line endings.
overwrite*, append
Overwrite the destination file or append to it.
This corresponds to the logflags command in the debugger.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> getregisters [--cpu=id] [reg-set.reg-name...]
Retrieves register values for guest CPUs and emulated devices.
reg-set.reg-name
One of more registers, each having one of the following forms:
register-set.register-name.sub-field
register-set.register-name
cpu-register-name.sub-field
cpu-register-name
all
The all form will cause all registers
to be shown (no sub-fields). The registers names are case-insensitive.
--cpu=id
Selects the CPU register set when specifying just a CPU register (3rd and 4th form). The default is 0.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> setregisters [--cpu=id] [reg-set.reg-name=value...]
Changes register values for guest CPUs and emulated devices.
reg-set.reg-name=value
One of more register assignment, each having one of the following forms:
register-set.register-name.sub-field=value
register-set.register-name=value
cpu-register-name.sub-field=value
cpu-register-name=value
The value format should be in the same style as what getregisters displays, with the exception that both octal and decimal can be used instead of hexadecimal.
--cpu id
Selects the CPU register set when specifying just a CPU register (3rd and 4th form). The default is 0.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> show [[--human-readable] | [--sh-export] | [--sh-eval] | [--cmd-set]] [settings-item...]
Shows logging settings for the VM.
--human-readable
Selects human readable output.
--sh-export
Selects output format as bourne shell style export commands.
--sh-eval
Selects output format as bourne shell style eval command input.
--cmd-set
Selects output format as DOS style SET commands.
settings-item
What to display. One or more of the following:
logdbg-settings - debug log settings.
logrel-settings - release log settings.
log-settings - alias for both debug and release log settings.
VBoxManage debugvm <uuid|vmname> statistics [--reset] [--descriptions] [--pattern=pattern]
Displays or resets VMM statistics.
Retrieves register values for guest CPUs and emulated devices.
--pattern=pattern
DOS/NT-style wildcards patterns for selecting statistics. Multiple patterns can be specified by using the '|' (pipe) character as separator.
--reset
Select reset instead of display mode.
Extension package management.
VBoxManage extpack install [--replace] <tarball>
Installs a new extension pack on the system. This command will fail if an older
version of the same extension pack is already installed. The
--replace option can be used to uninstall any
old package before the new one is installed.
--replace
Uninstall existing extension pack version.
tarball
The file containing the extension pack to be installed.
VBoxManage extpack uninstall [--force] <name>
Uninstalls an extension pack from the system. The subcommand will also succeed
in the case where the specified extension pack is not present on the system.
You can use VBoxManage list extpacks to show
the names of the extension packs which are currently installed.
--force
Overrides most refusals to uninstall an extension pack
name
The name of the extension pack to be uninstalled.
How to list extension packs:
$ VBoxManage list extpacks Extension Packs: 1 Pack no. 0: Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack Version: 4.1.12 Revision: 77218 Edition: Description: USB 2.0 Host Controller, VirtualBox RDP, PXE ROM with E1000 support. VRDE Module: VBoxVRDP Usable: true Why unusable:
How to remove an extension pack:
$ VBoxManage extpack uninstall "Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack" 0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100% Successfully uninstalled "Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack".
[37] For details, see Section 8.7, “VBoxManage createvm”.
[38] Before VirtualBox 4.0, it was necessary to call VBoxManage openmedium before a medium could be attached to a virtual machine; that call "registered" the medium with the global VirtualBox media registry. With VirtualBox 4.0 this is no longer necessary; media are added to media registries automatically. The "closemedium" call has been retained, however, to allow for explicitly removing a medium from a registry.
[39] Image resizing was added with VirtualBox 4.0.