If you’re like me and prefer the command line to the GUI, here’s a trick and script to help you manage your Solaris VMs.

1. Enable a serial port for the VM.
   1. Enable Port 1
   2. Port Number COM1
   3. Port Mode: Host Pipe
   4. Create Pipe
   5. Port/File Path: /tmp/vb-VM-NAME-console
2. Perform a reconfiguration boot on the VM.

3. Install socat on the host system

   sudo apt-get install socat

4. Change the eeprom console device for the VM:

   eeprom console=ttya

5. Change the /boot/grub/menu.lst for the VM:

   ...
   # To enable grub serial console to ttya uncomment the following lines
   # and comment out the splashimage line below
   # WARNING: don't enable grub serial console when BIOS console serial
   #       redirection is active!!!
   serial --unit=0 --speed=9600
   terminal serial
   #
   # Uncomment the following line to enable GRUB splashimage on console
   #splashimage /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
   #
   # To chainload another OS
   ...

6. Bring down the VM:

   init 5

7. Once this is done, we can now tell VirtualBox to boot the VM headless and connect with socat

   VBoxManage startvm node1 --type headless && socat -,raw,echo=0 /tmp/vb-node1-console

   I wrote a perl script to handle booting and connecting the console. Feel free to download: vb.pl

    $ vb.pl -h
    usage:

    vb.pl -l
    vb.pl -n VM -b
    vb.pl -n VM -p
    vb.pl -h

    -l : list VirtualBox machines
    -n : name of the VirtualBox machine
    -b : power on and boot machine
    -p : power off machine
    -h : this message.

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