Starting/stopping/pausing a VM
Now the fun begins. First, you must know the name of the VM you want to run. To find a list of the VMs, issue the command
vboxmanage list vms
vboxmanage list runningvms
This command will display all the VMs, as well as their unique IDs, in a form that you can use (Figure B).
To find all the hard disk images, use the command:
vboxmanage list hdds
To learn more detail about a specific instance, type
vboxmanage showvminfo ubuntu
Say we want to run the “ubuntu” VM as a headless instance. To do this, you would issue the command:
VBoxManage startvm "ubuntu" --type headless
The VM will start up and hand you back your bash prompt. Your virtual server (if that’s how you’re using the VM) is now available to you.
If you need to pause that VM, issue the command:
VBoxManage controlvm "ubuntu" pause
To restart that paused VM, issue the command:
VBoxManage controlvm "ubuntu" resume
To shut down the VM, issue the command:
VBoxManage controlvm "ubuntu" poweroff
VBoxManage controlvm "ubuntu" acpipowerbutton
Remove a vm
vboxmanage unregistervm ubuntu22 --delete
VBoxManage snapshot <uuid|vmname>
VBoxManage snapshot <uuid|vmname> take <snapshot-name>
VBoxManage snapshot <uuid|vmname> delete <snapshot-name>
VBoxManage snapshot <uuid|vmname> restore <snapshot-name>
VBoxManage snapshot <uuid|vmname> restorecurrent
VBoxManage snapshot <uuid|vmname> edit <snapshot-name | --current>
VBoxManage snapshot <uuid|vmname> list [--details | --machinereadable]
VBoxManage snapshot <uuid|vmname> showvminfo <snapshot-name>
vboxmanage snapshot ubuntu list
VBoxManage convertfromraw sda.dd sda.vdi --format VDI