virtualbox.org

I have a script which needs to do A depending if its invoked inside a VM and do B otherwise.

Is there a way to do this using virtualbox scripts/binaries? vmware has vmware-checkvm which does this.

Could you give more information about this feature? If you want to run a script, and depending if it runs on your VM or your Guest it executes a certain command, you might want to do a certain hardware check or other check that you put on the Guest and Host and run it through an if statement.

There is a script which I run during init of linux. This script can run during normal native boot or run inside the VM using vritualbox. I just want to do different things in this script depending upon whether I am running inside VM or running native.

For example, xorg.conf is different for a native boot and a boot inside VM. I just want to be able to flip the xorg.conf to virtualbox specific xorg.conf if its inside VM.

The VM has some is a different machine to the physical one so it is quite easy to detect variations in configuration. A good example is if you have GA installed then you can do an existence check on /dev/vboxadd, but even if you don't want to rely on GA being installed you can still probe /proc for things like grep /proc/cpuinfo pae or one of the flags that VBox always turns off (see the Vbox.log).

Anyway that's my suggestion for two cents.

I'm not sure if there is any special command to check 100% if it's under VirtualBox or not. The Guest Additions, for example, install as normal on a real system (just tested), so they definately don't do any checks.

You could check the model of the hard disk, if your config has one, for example

cat /sys/block/sda/device/model

gives

VBOX HARDDISK

Nice one, though that will fail if sda is not connected. You might want to do a test based on grepping sd*

based upon ideas from here, I think best check is probably for 'lspci|grep -i vga|grep -i virtualbox'

Can someone please tell me why does copy-paste with mouse not work from guest-to-host and vice versa? I just realized this when I was trying to copy paste that lspci command from guest to this text box....

GA 1.6.4. is running in the guest.

I think that your suggestion of using the output of the lspci enumerator is a good one, and I would just search for "VirtualBox Graphics Adapter" giving a test: As to your supplementary see Forum Posting Guide: one topic one Q. Has a scan: a common Q.

TerryE wrote:I think that your suggestion of using the output of the lspci enumerator is a good one, and I would just search for "VirtualBox Graphics Adapter" giving a test:

Code: Select all

if [ `lspci | grep -c "VirtualBox Graphics Adapter"` -eq "1" ]; then ...

As to your supplementary see Forum Posting Guide: one topic one Q. Has a scan: a common Q.

those muscles are going to ache...ease up a little, will ya....

yeah, I will search. But if I was you and I knew the answer, I would write it anyway. We are all here to help each other and reduce pain, right?