VBoxManage controlvm <vm> pause temporarily puts a virtual machine on hold, without changing its state for good. The VM window will be painted in gray to indicate that the VM is currently paused. (This is equivalent to selecting the "Pause" item in the "VM" menu of the GUI.)

Use VBoxManage controlvm <vm> resume to undo a previous pause command. (This is equivalent to selecting the "Resume" item in the "VM" menu of the GUI.)

VBoxManage controlvm <vm> reset has the same effect on a virtual machine as pressing the "Reset" button on a real computer: a cold reboot of the virtual machine, which will restart and boot the guest operating system again immediately. The state of the VM is not saved beforehand, and data may be lost. (This is equivalent to selecting the "Reset" item in the "VM" menu of the GUI.)

VBoxManage controlvm <vm> poweroff has the same effect on a virtual machine as pulling the power cable on a real computer. Again, the state of the VM is not saved beforehand, and data may be lost. (This is equivalent to selecting the "Close" item in the "VM" menu of the GUI or pressing the window's close button, and then selecting "Power off the machine" in the dialog.)

After this, the VM's state will be "Powered off". From there, it can be started again; see Sectioná8.6, “VBoxManage startvm”.

VBoxManage controlvm <vm> savestate will save the current state of the VM to disk and then stop the VM. (This is equivalent to selecting the "Close" item in the "VM" menu of the GUI or pressing the window's close button, and then selecting "Save the machine state" in the dialog.)

After this, the VM's state will be "Saved". From there, it can be started again; see Sectioná8.6, “VBoxManage startvm”.

The setlinkstate<1-4> operation connects or disconnects virtual network cables from their network interfaces

usbattach and usbdettach make host USB devices visible to the virtual machine on the fly, without the need for creating filters first. The USB devices can be specified by UUID (unique identifier) or by address on the host system.

You can use VBoxManage list usbhost to locate this information.

dvdattach inserts a DVD image into the virtual machine or connects it to the host DVD drive. With this command (as opposed to VBoxManage modifyvm), the image file does not first have to be registered with VirtualBox.

You can use VBoxManage list hostdvds to display all the drives found on the host and the names VirtualBox uses to access them.

floppyattach works in a similar way.

setvideomodehint requests that the guest system change to a particular video mode. This requires that the guest additions be installed, and will not work for all guest systems.

The setcredentials operation is used for remote logons in Windows guests. For details, please refer to Sectioná9.2, “Automated Windows guest logons (VBoxGINA)”.