This command changes the properties of a registered virtual machine.
Most of the properties that this command makes available correspond to the
VM settings that VirtualBox graphical user interface displays in each VM's
"Settings" dialog; these were described in Sectioná3.7, “Virtual machine settings”. Some of the more advanced settings, however,
are only available through the VBoxManage
interface.
The following general settings are available through
VBoxManage modifyvm:
-name <name>: This
changes the VM's name and possibly renames the internal virtual
machine files, as described with VBoxManage
createvm above.
-ostype <ostype>:
This specifies what guest operating system is supposed to run in
the VM. As mentioned at Sectioná3.2, “Creating a virtual machine”, this
setting is presently purely descriptive. To learn about the
various identifiers that can be used here, use
VBoxManage list ostypes.
-memory <memorysize>:
This sets the amount of RAM, in MB, that the virtual machine
should allocate for itself from the host. Again, see the remarks
in Sectioná3.2, “Creating a virtual machine” for more information.
-vram <vramsize>:
This sets the amount of RAM that the virtual graphics card should
have. See Sectioná3.7.1, “General settings” for details.
-acpi on|off;
-ioapic on|off: These two
determine whether the VM should have ACPI and I/O APIC support,
respectively; see Sectioná3.7.1.2, “"Advanced" tab” for
details.
-pae on|off: This
enables/disables PAE (see Sectioná3.7.1.2, “"Advanced" tab”).
-hwvirtex on|off|default:
This enables or disables the use of virtualization extensions
(Intel VT-x or AMD-V) in the processor of your host system; see
Sectioná1.2, “Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V)”.
-nestedpaging on|off:
This enables or disables the use of the nested paging feature
(currently AMD-V only) in the processor of your host system; see
Sectioná1.2, “Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V)”.
You can influence the BIOS logo that is displayed when a virtual machine starts up with a number of settings. Per default, a VirtualBox logo is displayed.
With -bioslogofadein on|off
and -bioslogofadeout on|off, you
can determine whether the logo should fade in and out,
respectively.
With -bioslogodisplaytime
<msec> you can set how long the logo should
be visible, in milliseconds.
With -bioslogoimagepath
<imagepath> you can, if you are so
inclined, replace the image that is shown, with your own logo. The
image must be an uncompressed 256 color BMP file.
-biosbootmenu
disabled|menuonly|messageandmenu: This specifies
whether the BIOS allows the user to select a temporary boot
device. menuonly suppresses the
message, but the user can still press F12 to select a temporary
boot device.
-boot<1-4>
none|floppy|dvd|disk|net: This specifies the boot
order for the virtual machine. There are four "slots", which the
VM will try to access from 1 to 4, and for each of which you can
set a device that the VM should attempt to boot from.
-snapshotfolder
default|<path>: This allows you to specify
the folder in which snapshots will be kept for a virtual
machine.
The following storage settings are available through
VBoxManage modifyvm:
-hd<a|b|d>
none|<uuid>|<filename>: This
specifies the settings for each of the three virtual hard disks
that can be attached to a VM's IDE controller (primary master and
slave, and secondary slave; the secondary master is always
reserved for the virtual CD/DVD drive). For each of these three,
specify either the UUID or a filename of a virtual disk that you
have
either registered with VBoxManage
registerimage; see Sectioná8.10, “VBoxManage registerimage / unregisterimage”;
or created using VBoxManage
createvdi with the
-register option; see Sectioná8.12, “VBoxManage createvdi”;
alternatively, specify the UUID of an iSCSI target
that you have registered with VBoxManage
addiscsidisk; see Sectioná8.16, “VBoxManage addiscsidisk”.
-sata on|off: this
determines whether VirtualBox, in addition to the IDE controller,
should also present an SATA controller as a second PCI device to
the virtual machine. See Sectioná5.1, “Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA, AHCI”
for additional information.
-sataportcount
<1-30>: if the SATA controller is enabled,
this determines how many ports the SATA controller should
support.
-sataport<1-30>
none|<uuid>|<filename>: if the SATA
controller is enabled, this specifies how an SATA slot should be
occupied. This works just like the
-hd options explained
above.
-sataideemulation<1-4>
<1-30>: if the SATA controller is enabled,
this specifies which SATA ports should operate in IDE emulation
mode. As explained in Sectioná5.1, “Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA, AHCI”, by
default, this is the case for SATA ports 1-4; with this command,
you can map four IDE channels to any of the 30 supported SATA
ports.
-dvd
none|<uuid>|<filename>|host:<drive>:
This specifies what VirtualBox should provide to the VM as the
virtual CD/DVD drive; specify either the UUID or the filename of
an image file that you have registered with
VBoxManage registerimage (see
Sectioná8.10, “VBoxManage registerimage / unregisterimage”). Alternatively,
specify "host:" with the drive specification of your host's
drive.
-dvdpassthrough on|off:
With this, you can enable DVD writing support (currently
experimental; see Sectioná3.7.3, “CD/DVD-ROM and floppy
settings”).
-floppy
disabled|empty|<uuid>|<filename>|host:<drive>:
This is the floppy equivalent to the
-dvd option described above.
disabled completely disables the
floppy controller, whereas empty
keeps the floppy controller enabled, but without a media
inserted.
The following networking settings are available through
VBoxManage modifyvm:
-nic<1-N>
none|null|nat|hostif|intnet: With this, you can
set, for each of the VM's virtual network cards, what type of
networking should be available. They can be not present (none),
not connected to the host (null), use network address translation
(nat), a host interface (hostif) or communicate with other virtual
machines using internal networking (intnet). These options
correspond to the modes which are described in detail in Sectioná6.2, “Introduction to networking modes”.
-nictype<1-N>
Am79C970A|Am79C973|82540EM: This allows you, for
each of the VM's virtual network cards, to specify which
networking hardware VirtualBox presents to the guest; see Sectioná6.1, “Virtual networking hardware”.
-cableconnected<1-N>
on|off: This allows you to temporarily disconnect
a virtual network interface, as if a network cable had been pulled
from a real network card. This might be useful for resetting
certain software components in the VM.
With the "nictrace" options, you can optionally trace network traffic, for debugging purposes. With -nictrace<1-N> on|off, you can enable network tracing for a particular virtual network card.
If enabled, you must specify with
-nictracefile<1-N>
<filename> what file the trace should be
logged to.
-hostifdev<1-N>
none|<devicename>: If host interface
networking has been enabled for a virtual network card (see the
-nic option above; otherwise this
setting has no effect), use this option to specify which host
interface the given virtual network interface will use.
For Windows hosts, this should be the name of a VirtualBox
host interface which you have created using the
createhostif command. For Linux
hosts, this should be the name of an existing static interface or
none if you wish to allocate an
interface dynamically. In the latter case, you should also specify
the creation and termination scripts for the interface with
-tapsetup<1-4> and
-tapterminate<1-4>. For
details, please see Sectioná6.5, “Introduction to Host Interface
Networking (HIF)”.
-intnet<1-N> network:
If internal networking has been enabled for a virtual network card
(see the -nic option above;
otherwise this setting has no effect), use this option to specify
the name of the internal network (see Sectioná6.10, “Internal networking”).
-macaddress<1-N>
auto|<mac>: With this option you can set
the MAC address of the virtual network card. Per default, each
virtual network card is assigned a random address by VirtualBox at
VM creation.
The following other settings are available through
VBoxManage modifyvm:
-uart<1-N> off|<I/O base>
<IRQ>: With this option you can configure
virtual serial ports for the VM; see Sectioná3.7.6, “Serial ports” for an introduction.
-uartmode<1-N>
<arg>: This setting controls how VirtualBox
connects a given virtual serial port (previously configured with
the -uartX setting, see above) to
the host on which the virtual machine is running. As described in
detail in Sectioná3.7.6, “Serial ports”, for each such port, you
can specify <arg> as one of
the following options:
disconnected: Even
though the serial port is shown to the guest, it has no
"other end" -- like a real COM port without a cable.
server
<pipename>: On a Windows host, this
tells VirtualBox to create a named pipe on the host named
<pipename> and
connect the virtual serial device to it. Note that Windows
requires that the name of a named pipe begin with
\\.\pipe\.
On a Linux host, instead of a named pipe, a local domain socket is used.
client
<pipename>: This operates just like
server ..., except that the
pipe (or local domain socket) is not created by VirtualBox,
but assumed to exist already.
<devicename>:
If, instead of the above, the device name of a physical
hardware serial port of the host is specified, the virtual
serial port is connected to that hardware port. On a Windows
host, the device name will be a COM port such as
COM1; on a Linux host, the
device name will look like
/dev/ttyS0. This allows you
to "wire" a real serial port to a virtual machine.
-audio none|null|oss: With
this option, you can set whether the VM should have audio
support.
-clipboard disabled|hosttoguest|guesttohost|
bidirectional: With this setting, you can select
whether the guest operating system's clipboard should be shared
with the host; see Sectioná3.7.1, “General settings”. This
requires that the Guest Additions be installed in the virtual
machine.
-vrdp on|off: With the
VirtualBox graphical user interface, this enables or disables the
built-in VRDP server. Note that if you are using
VBoxHeadless (see Sectioná7.4.1, “VBoxHeadless, the VRDP-only server”), VRDP output is always enabled.
-vrdpport
default|<port>: This lets you specify which
port should be used; "default" or "0" means port 3389, the
standard port for RDP. Only one machine can use a given port at a
time.
-vrdpauthtype
null|external|guest: This allows you to choose
whether and how authorization will be performed; see Sectioná7.4.4, “RDP authentication” for details.
-usb on|off: This option
enables or disables the VM's virtual USB controller; see Sectioná3.7.7.1, “USB settings” for details.
-usbehci on|off: This
option enables or disables the VM's virtual USB 2.0 controller;
see Sectioná3.7.7.1, “USB settings” for details.