CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonvirtualbox
ask
ask

Reputation: 161

Starting VirtualBox VM using Python

How can I start a virtual machine from virtualbox as headless using pyvb modules?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 12843

Answers (3)

Mattia Baldari
Mattia Baldari

Reputation: 627

If you use the library pyvbox the task you want to achieve is very simple: 

import virtualbox

vbox = virtualbox.VirtualBox()
machine = vbox.find_machine("you_virtual_machine_name")  ## for example: "ubuntu"
# If you want to run it normally:
proc = machine.launch_vm_process(session, "gui")
# If you want to run it in background:
# proc = machine.launch_vm_process(session, "headless")
proc.wait_for_completion(timeout=-1)

Upvotes: 0

alpha_989
alpha_989

Reputation: 5350

YOu can use the pyvbox python module to startup and stop virtualboxes using the Vbox interaface:

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyvbox

Upvotes: 0

Etienne
Etienne

Reputation: 12590

You can use the real python bindings instead (and not a wrapper that call the VBoxManager command line in a subprocess, say pyvb) relatively easily by using the vboxshell.py script from virtual box.

Or you can use it for reference documentation of the python bindings. There's no documentation for the python bindings and honestly they are not implemented in a good pythonic way. Attributes and methods are not present in the __dict__, so it's not possible to find them by introspection (or autocompletion in ipython) and there's no docstring either. Another reference for the python bindings are the source code of the vboxweb project here: VBoxWebSrv.py

For the headless startup, you need to pass 'headless' to the third argument (type) of the vbox.openRemoteSession(session, uuid, type, "") method call. Look at startVm() function in vboxshell.py and VBoxWebSrv.py for reference.

Upvotes: 11

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