DevOps

Development environment

Docker notes

VirtualBox

Running a VM headless (in the background, like a service) or without GUI

Last tested on Windows 10 Home x64 (v1511, build 10586.318) + VirtualBox v5.0.20 r106931

given:

• the name of the virtual machine is virtualmachine

instruction:

We first create a batch file that runs the VM. Create a file named vm-run.bat with the following content.

cd "c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\"
VBoxHeadless -s virtualmachine -v on

We can just use the batch file above, however, it opens up the shell to run the batch file. We use Windows-based script host using VBS to run the file. Create a file named vm-run.vbs with the following content.

set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
obj = WshShell.Run("vm-run.bat",0)
set WshShell = Nothing

Use the following line to run the VM in the background: wscript vm-run.vbs </source>

optional:

You can optionally create a shortcut on your Desktop with the following value in Target:

C:\Windows\System32\wscript.exe C:\Files\tools\vm.run.vbs

To check if it's running, go to Task Manager (taskmgr using CLI) and check Details tab. There should be 3 instances of VBoxHeadless.exe processes running. Another way to check in CLI is to execute this line:

C:\Users\JMoe>tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq VBoxHeadless.exe"

Image Name                     PID Session Name        Session#    Mem Usage
========================= ======== ================ =========== ============
VBoxHeadless.exe              7104 Console                    1      2,444 K
VBoxHeadless.exe              7112 Console                    1      4,164 K
VBoxHeadless.exe              7136 Console                    1     83,596 K