Question

29

How can I send VBoxHeadless to the background so I can close the Terminal?

rated 0 times [ 29] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 20508 / 2 Years ago, thu, march 3, 2022, 3:39:59

I would like to start virtual machines in headless mode. The advantage: I can logoff from the desktop, and the machine will continue to run. However, starting the virtual machine blocks the Terminal from closing. Is there a clever solution to have everything like a service in the background? If I do 'sudo service ntp start' it will start, and then I can close the Terminal. I could do the following, but I'm not happy with it:

nohup VBoxHeadless -s "MyGuest" &

log in from a login shell (tty1-6) which is equipped with Byobu, start the VM, and instead of logging out I could detach with F6.

Better way of doing it?

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answered 2 Years ago oraoming · Accepted Answer

Just found a solution here: Starting the the virtual machine with VBoxManage instead of VBoxHeadless solves my problem:

VBoxManage startvm <uuid|vmname> --type headless

For example, if your VM's name was Ubuntu and it had a UUID of 865b2700-471a-11e4-916c-0800200c9a66, you can run:

VBoxManage startvm Ubuntu --type headless

or

VBoxManage startvm 865b2700-471a-11e4-916c-0800200c9a66 --type headless

Note: If the name of your VM contains spaces, wrap the name in quotes (e.g. "My Ubuntu").

The machine goes nicely into the background. Now I can control the virtual machine with VBoxManage controlvm poweroff/pause/reset (section 3.3).