Controlling VirtualBox from the command line


My virtual machine is called centos.

List virtual machines

$ vboxmanage list vms

Start a virtual machine

$ vboxmanage startvm centos --type headless

List snapshots of a virtual machine

$ vboxmanage snapshot centos list

Restore a snapshot

Stop the machine if it's running, then restore a snapshot identified either by its name or its ID. You can get both from issuing vboxmanage snapshot centos list:

$ vboxmanage controlvm centos poweroff
$ vboxmanage snapshot centos restore a927529c-60fd-47c2-af98-4a0d38eea642

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