While any VM started from VirtualBox Manager is capable of running virtual machines remotely, it is not convenient to have to run the full GUI if you never want to have VMs displayed locally in the first place. In particular, if you are running server hardware whose only purpose is to host VMs, and all your VMs are supposed to run remotely over VRDP, then it is pointless to have a graphical user interface on the server at all. This is especially true for Linux or Oracle Solaris hosts, as the VirtualBox Manager comes with dependencies on the Qt and SDL libraries. This is inconvenient if you would rather not have the X Window system on your server at all.

Oracle VM VirtualBox therefore comes with a front-end called VBoxHeadless, which produces no visible output on the host at all, but still can optionally deliver VRDP data. This front-end has no dependencies on the X Window system on Linux and Oracle Solaris hosts.

To start a virtual machine with VBoxHeadless, you have the following options:

• Use the VBoxManage command, as follows:

  $ VBoxManage startvm VM-name --type headless

  The --type option causes Oracle VM VirtualBox to use VBoxHeadless as the front-end to the internal virtualization engine, instead of the Qt front-end.

• Use the VBoxHeadless command, as follows:

  VBoxHeadless --startvm uuid|vmname
                          

  This way of starting the VM helps troubleshooting problems reported by VBoxManage startvm, because you can sometimes see more detailed error messages, especially for early failures before the VM execution is started. In normal situations VBoxManage startvm is preferred, since it runs the VM directly as a background process which has to be done explicitly when directly starting with VBoxHeadless.

• Start VBoxHeadless from VirtualBox Manager, by pressing the Shift key when starting a virtual machine or by selecting Headless Start from the Machine menu.

When you use the VBoxHeadless command to start a VM, the VRDP server will be enabled according to the VM configuration. You can override the VM's setting using --vrde command line parameter. To enable the VRDP server, start the VM as follows:

VBoxHeadless --startvm uuid|vmname --vrde on

To disable the VRDP server:

VBoxHeadless --startvm uuid|vmname --vrde off

To have the VRDP server enabled depending on the VM configuration, as for other front-ends:

VBoxHeadless --startvm uuid|vmname --vrde config

This command is the same as the following:

VBoxHeadless --startvm uuid|vmname
                  

If you start the VM with VBoxManage startvm then the configuration settings of the VM are always used.