VirtualBox is a valuable tool for blind systems engineers because it has a powerful command line interface. Everything that can be done via the GUI configuration program can also be done at the command line. Plus, VirtualBox has a screen capture feature that can be used along with an OCR program to read the screen of a virtual machine.
Below are some sample scripts I wrote to make my work with VirtualBox easier. While the scripts may be useful as is, they are meant primarily as examples of how the commands can be used by blind systems engineers.
This script automates the creation, configuration,and booting of a virtual machine.
There are 4 command line parameters:
Follow instructions in the script to change the number of processors, amount of memory, hard disk size, and other parameters.
Create aWindows 10, 64 bit virtual machine named Windows10_64, with Virtualbox ostype Windows10_64, boot from the Windows installation ISO image Windows10_64.iso, and use the Windows installation answer file named Windows10_64.xml
vbcreatevm.sh Windows10_64 Windows10_64 Windows10_64.iso Windows10_64.xml
Create a virtual machine called Debian_64, with the VirtualBox ostype Debian_64, and boot from the Debian installation isodebian-12.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso. (No anser file.)
vbcreatevm.sh Debian_64 Debian_64 debian-12.9.0-amd64-netinst.iso
This script uses OCR to read the text content on the screen of a running VirtualBox virtual machine.
There is 1 command line parameter:
Display the text content of a currently running VirtualBox virtual machine named Debian_64
vbscreencap.sh Debian_64