commands to help me manage my virtual machine
Requires: VirtualBox. Tested on Mac OSX 10.9.
Get the name of your virtual machine:
$ VBoxManage list vms
"Apache - Centos PHP 5.3" {a5438d86-c153-4d58-a8c1-ad7326336707}
"Apache - Centos PHP 5.3 Experimental" {3d3a787a-15c9-4668-8a1a-e39cb3af0d2d}
Copy the name (between the quotes) of the machine you wish to control.
Edit the scripts and replace "Apache - Centos 5.3" with your virtual machine name. Put your name at the bottom of vboxwait.
Note: vboxip gives you the IP address of the first VM in the list. I guess it should be updated to use the name instead.
Copy to your bin folder:
$ sudo chmod +x vbox*
$ sudo cp vbox* /usr/bin
On the Mac you may need to close the terminal and reopen in order for the commands to be available.
Get the IP address of your vm:
$ vboxip
Get the IP address of your host machine (Tested on a Mac) :
$ hostip
Copy the IP address of your vm (at least on the Mac). Note that this could include a newline after the IP address.
$ vboxip | pbcopy
Start your vm in headless mode
$ vboxstart
Restart your vm
$ vboxreset
You may want to restart your VM if you want a new IP. Restarting can take a few minutes, so you can use vboxwait to alert you when it's ready. Mac only:
$ vboxwait
You can grab a screenshot of your VM to see what's going on. This command will create a file called screenshot.png in the current directory.
$ vboxscreen
If you have the QuickLook ql command installed (Mac only) you can use it to quickly view the screenshot:
$ vboxscreen; ql screenshot.png
If you want to monitor your vm's apache error log file, you can use the following command. Note that your error log must be somewhere that your host machine can access (I keep mine in /websites/logs). You can change where Apache keeps its error log in httpd.conf. The say command is Mac OSX only. For other operating systems you can have it play back an audio file or emit a system beep.
$ errorwatch
If you want to do more with your virtualbox from the command line use VBoxManage. Here are some common commands:
List VMs:
$ VBoxManage list vms
Reset:
$ VBoxManage controlvm "Your VM Name" reset
Poweroff:
$ VBoxManage controlvm "Your VM Name" poweroff
Save State:
$ VBoxManage controlvm "Your VM Name" savestate