managing virtualbox on the command line

You might want to manage virtualbox (the PC emulator) on the command line. The use case would be if you want to make a virtual machine (VM) on your machine which does not appear on-screen or which is started automatically.

Suppose the virtual machine instance is called 'ubu'. The following commands will be useful. They are self-explanatory. The command VBoxManage should be in /Applications/VirtualBox/Contents/Resources/MacOS/ or similar.

VBoxManage startvm "ubu" --type headless

VBoxManage controlvm "ubu" pause --type headless

VBoxManage controlvm "ubu" resume --type headless

VBoxManage controlvm "ubu"  savestate

VBoxManage controlvm "ubu" poweroff --type headless

VBoxManage startvm "ubu" --type gui

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