This is my first time playing with the VirtualBox CLI. I'm trying to start a VM and then connect directly to its shell. I'm trying the following:
ram#nope:~/VirtualBox VMs> vboxmanage startvm my-machine --type headless
Waiting for VM "my-machine" to power on...
VM "my-machine" has been successfully started.
ram#nope:~/VirtualBox VMs> vboxmanage guestcontrol my-machine run bash
VBoxManage: error: Machine "my-machine" is not running (currently powered off)!
This is really frustrating because it's saying the machine was started, but then it doesn't work, with no error message.
Also, is my second message the appropriate one to connect to the shell in the guest? I basically want the same shell that's displayed to a user running the VM from the VirtualBox GUI. I also want to be able to script this and push commands automatically to the VM in a script.
Related
I found this auto shutdown script for VM instances on GCP and tried to add that into the VM's metadata.
Here's a link to that shutdown script.
The config sets it so that after 20 mins the idle VM will shut down, but it's been a few hours and it never shut down. Are there any more steps I have to do after adding the script to the VM metadata?
The metadata script I added:
Startup scripts are executed while the VM starts. If you execute your "shutdown script" at the boot there will be nothing for it to do. Additionally in order for this to work a proper service has to be created and it will be using this script to detect & shutdown the VM in case it's idling.
So - even if the main script ashutdown was executed at boot and there was no idling it did nothing. And since the service wasn't there to run it again your instance will run indefinatelly.
For this to work you need to install everything on the VM in question;
Download all three files to some directory in your vm, for example with curl:
curl -LJO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/ai-platform-samples/master/notebooks/tools/auto-shutdown/ashutdown
curl -LJO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/ai-platform-samples/master/notebooks/tools/auto-shutdown/ashutdown.service
curl -LJO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/ai-platform-samples/master/notebooks/tools/auto-shutdown/install.sh
Make install.sh exacutable: sudo chmod +x install.sh
Run it: sudo ./install.sh.
This should install & run the ashutdown service in your system.
You can check if it's running with service ashutdown status.
These instructions are for Debian system so if you're running CentOS or other flavour of Linux they may differ.
I am running a virtual machine in Google Cloud. I have installed the default Debian OS, and configured the desktop environment for remote connection, as explained here: https://cloud.google.com/solutions/chrome-desktop-remote-on-compute-engine
I have been able to connect to the instance via Chrome Remote Desktop, however periodically I have the problem that the Remote Desktop says the vm instance is online, however if I try to connect to it I get:
Looking at the Google Cloud console, the instance is clearly running. Normally if I restart the instance the problem is solved, however I have processes running on the instance that I do not want to stop.
UPDATE:
Following the advice from Serhii Rohoza I ran
sudo systemctl status chrome-remote-desktop
The status looked normal, listing:
Active: active (exited) since...
I then ran
sudo systemctl restart chrome-remote-desktop
and this solved the problem, I could log into remote desktop again, but it seemed the VM instance had restarted, which is a big problem since I am running processes on it that should not shut down. I guess this is a problem to send to Google Cloud Services support.
UPDATE 2:
I'm still running into this problem. I normally have a Jupyter Notebook running on the VM - this Notebook must keep running. When I saw the message saying that the remote computer is offline, I logged in via ssh and checked if the Jupyter Notebook is running:
jupyter notebook list
This returned:
http://localhost:8888/?token=9110bf40789971b5e252a272e9497039b4f3b45e506348df :: /home/qgenixtech
So the Notebook was running. I then ran:
sudo systemctl restart chrome-remote-desktop
and after that again:
jupyter notebook list
and then it shows no Notebooks running. So the restart command closed down the Notebook (and also all other open windows on the desktop).
UPDATE 3:
I spoke to a support technician at Google. The problem is on the Remote Desktop side, not the virtual machine. According to the technician this is a known problem, by he didn't have a solution for it. He referred me to these two links from Google Support:
https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/10213547?hl=en
https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/3333421?hl=en
The next option for me is to look at something like X2go
To solve your issue you should follow documentation Troubleshooting and check status of the Chrome Remote Desktop service with command:
sudo systemctl status chrome-remote-desktop
and check log messages at /tmp/chrome_remote_desktop_DATE_TIME_*.
To investigate why your VM instance was restarted you should look for some clues at the logs:
Go to Compute Engine -> VM instances -> click on NAME_OF_YOUR_VM -> find section Logs -> click on Stackdriver Logging. More information you can find in the documentation Viewing logs (Classic)
Go to Compute Engine -> VM instances -> click on NAME_OF_YOUR_VM -> find section Logs -> click on Serial port 1 (console). More information in the documentation Viewing Serial Port Output
You can contact with Google Cloud Support as well.
In addition, have a look at the documentation Setting instance availability policies.
same issue. when checking logs i see:
2021-01-05 14:29:38,319:INFO:Starting Xvfb on display :20
xdpyinfo: unable to open display ":20".
2021-01-05 14:29:40,837:INFO:X server is active.
restarting service or even VM doesn't work.
i need to delete connection on "client" and re-auth with /headless link
I'm trying to automate VMWare Desktop on Windows 7 to suspend all vm's before I do a backup job each night. I used to have a script that did this but I've noticed now that it won't suspend anymore with the same command that used to work.
If I do vmrun list I get a list of the running vms with no issue.
If I do vmrun suspend "V:\Virtual Machines\RICHARD-DEV\RICHARD-DEV.vmx" it just hangs and I have to kill the command with CTRL+C.
I've even tried a newer command using -T to specify it's workstation, ie vmrun -T ws suspend "V:\Virtual Machines\RICHARD-DEV\RICHARD-DEV.vmx" and still no love.
If I have the vm already stopped, I can issue vmrun start "V:\Virtual Machines\RICHARD-DEV\RICHARD-DEV.vmx" and it starts fine.
As well as the suspend command, the stop command also does not work. I'm running VMWare Workstation 11.1.3 build-3206955 on Windows 7.
Any ideas?
Update:
I installed latest VMWare Tools on the guest, as well as the latest Vix on the Host so everything should be up to date.
I can start a vm using vmrun with no problem using vmrun -T ws start <path to vmx> but the command doesn't come back to the command prompt, so I'm assuming it's not getting confirmation from the vm that it is now running.
If I cancel the 'start' command and now try and suspend I'm getting the same lack of communication from the guest. If I manually suspend the vm, once it's suspended I get an 'Error: vm is not running' and the 'suspend' command finally times out and comes back.
So, it looks to me like there is no communication from vmrun to the guest about what state it's in etc. Is there a way to debug the communication from the host to the guest using vmrun or other means? Are there ports I need open in the guest OS?
So, I never did get vmrun to work properly on my main system, although I did get it behave ok on my laptop so there is something weird happening on this machine. I also installed a trial of the latest VMWare 12 and the same thing happens.
As a workaround, I ended up changing the power management settings in my guest OS so that it would 'sleep' after 1 hr of inactivity. When this happens VMWare detects it and automatically suspends the guest which is really what I'm looking for. Not the most slick solution but it does manage to unlock the files I need to be backed up in a nightly backup.
Folks,
I am running Virtualbox on Windows 7. The guest OS also is Windows 7.
I configured rdp connection at port 5000 (as stated in the documentation) and am able to connect to ip:5000 using Microsoft Remote Desktop client.
However, the problem is that the screen of the guest VM is simultaneously being shown on both, local as well as remote, windows.
Is there a way to just close the local window without shutting down the VM itself? Perhaps something similar to headless virtualbox on Linux.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Regards,
Peter
You can start a Virtualbox VM without GUI from the command line using:
VBoxHeadless --startvm [vmname]
There is also a section about running headless VMs in the Virtualbox manual: http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html
Using the VBoxManage startvm command with the --type option is superior to VBoxHeadless as the former doesn't require the command prompt window to remain open (which largely defeats the purpose I think).
Below is and example of its output:
C:\>"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" startvm "My Virtual Machine" --type headless
Waiting for VM "My Virtual Machine" to power on...
VM "My Virtual Machine" has been successfully started.
C:\>
Note that control is returned to the common prompt, allowing it to be closed without terminating the instance. The VM's status will also still be reported by the VirtualBox GUI.
The VBoxManage startvm command is documented in chapter 8 of the VirtualBox manual.
Both host and vm are xubuntu 12.04.
I know that VBoxManage startvm "name" will start a VM from command line but the GUI will pop up anyway. Is there a way to start this vm and make it running sneakily at the background? Thus I can access it as if it is a server. Previously I let the GUI up and do my job via the console of the host.
Thanks
I think you're looking for VBoxManage startvm "VM name" --type headless