virtualbox.org

Hi,
I am using an Ubuntu 12.04 guest in a Windows 7 host. I would like to launch Ubuntu's Firefox using a command in Windows. I discovered the vboxmanage guestcontrol function and it sounds like it does exactly what I want. The problem is that I can't get it to work. Here is the command and output that I type at the DOS prompt:

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C:\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe guestcontrol MyVirtualMachineUbuntu exec --image /usr/bin/firefox --username bob --password password --wait-stdout --verbose
Waiting for guest to start process ...
Waiting for process to exit ...
Exit code=1 (Status=500 [successfully terminated])

I have my Ubuntu machine running. Nothing visibly happens, except the VBoxService process spikes up in the "top" command, so something is happening. When I replace the Firefox command with /bin/ls, the command works:

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C:\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe guestcontrol MyVirtualMachineUbuntu exec --image /bin/ls --username bob --password password --wait-stdout --verbose
Waiting for guest to start process ...
Waiting for process to exit ...
bin
boot
cdrom
dev
etc
......

So it seems like I can get stdout from simple commands to display, but I don't know how to launch programs/scripts. Is anyone able to launch a program like Firefox in an Ubuntu guest via a command in the Host? If you have any idea about general guest/host communication best practices, I'd also be interested in that.

Thanks.

The problem is most likely that guestcontrol executes what you give it in its own console, rather than within your graphical desktop environment.

I was able to get Firefox to run successfully by running the following command. Note that using /bin/sh with the -c argument is helpful in running more complex commands. You'll also have to replace the user/pass/homedir with your own.

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C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe guestcontrol "Ubuntu 12.10" exec --image /bin/sh --username AzureDiamond --password hunter2 --wait-stdout -- -c "env XAUTHORITY=/home/AzureDiamond/.Xauthority DISPLAY=':0' /usr/bin/firefox"

See here for more info on launching GUI applications from a non-GUI terminal - also useful if you're using SSH to access your VM remotely.

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Using VBoxManage's guestcontrol To Launch A Program In Linux

Using VBoxManage's guestcontrol To Launch A Program In Linux

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