An Introduction to the VirtualBox CLI

This post provides a basic introduction to the VirtualBox CLI (command-line interface) tool, vboxmanage. This post does not attempt to replace the comprehensive documentation; rather, its purpose is to help users who are new to vboxmanage (such as myself, having recently adopted VirtualBox for my Vagrant environments) get somewhat up to speed as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

Basic Commands

Let’s start with some basic operations. Here are a few to get you started:

  • To list all the registered VMs, simply run vboxmanage list vms. Note that if you are using Vagrant with VirtualBox, this command will also show VirtualBox VMs that have been instantiated by Vagrant. Similarly, if you are using Docker Machine with VirtualBox, this command will show you VMs created by Docker Machine.

  • To list all the running VMs, use vboxmanage list runningvms.

  • To start a VM, run vboxmanage startvm <name or UUID>. You can optionally specify a --type parameter to control how the VM is started. Using --type gui will show it via the host GUI; using --type headless means you’ll need to interact over the network (typically via SSH). To emulate Vagrant/Docker Machine-like behavior, you’d use --type headless.

  • Once a VM is Continue reading

43% off TripWorthy 100-Piece First Aid Bag For Car, Camping or Travel – Deal Alert

Be prepared for the unexpected emergency with this 100-piece 1st aid kit from TripWorthy that is lightweight, small and durable so you can take it wherever you go. Ideal for hiking, camping, hunting or anywhere you may travel. This #1 Best Selling item on Amazon averages 4.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 500 people (88% rate 5 stars: read reviews) and its typical list price of $35 has been reduced to $20. See it on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

President Trump: An uncertain future for tech industry, digital rights

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's vision for the country's economy-driving technology industry is largely a blank canvas, and when he's dipped his toe into IT issues, he's made people nervous. Trump's campaign was dominated by debates over illegal immigration, lost manufacturing jobs, and character issues. Silicon Valley firms largely opposed Trump, and one of his signature issues, rewriting free trade deals between the U.S. and other nations, likely will hurt U.S tech companies' ability to sell products overseas. Meanwhile, digital rights groups say they expect Trump to call for expanded government surveillance programs to fight terrorism and fewer protections for privacy. And a Trump administration will likely work to gut net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission passed only last year, although repealing the rules won't be easy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

President Trump: An uncertain future for tech industry, digital rights

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's vision for the country's economy-driving technology industry is largely a blank canvas, and when he's dipped his toe into IT issues, he's made people nervous. Trump's campaign was dominated by debates over illegal immigration, lost manufacturing jobs, and character issues. Silicon Valley firms largely opposed Trump, and one of his signature issues, rewriting free trade deals between the U.S. and other nations, likely will hurt U.S tech companies' ability to sell products overseas. Meanwhile, digital rights groups say they expect Trump to call for expanded government surveillance programs to fight terrorism and fewer protections for privacy. And a Trump administration will likely work to gut net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission passed only last year, although repealing the rules won't be easy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BrandPost: Can your WAN do more?

Wide area network (WAN) decision-making today generally centers on Internet Protocol (IP)-based services. But many organizations are still running older networking services in various parts of the enterprise, limiting their ability to take advantage of new intelligent features and applications.IP services provide a rich and automated feature set that has been widely deployed and which enable automation and business agility. Among the key enterprise benefits: Flexibility to forward traffic directly among any of your MPLS VPN-connected sites Revolutionary programmability with software-defined networking (SDN) over IP With IP-over-Ethernet in the last mile you can easily increase or decrease access speeds IP-based cellular links can provide a primary or a backup last-mile link Unseen bottlenecksTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware hammers Madison County, Indiana

Madison County, Indiana, population of about 130,000, was the victim of a ransomware attack last week. Government workers without working computers were thrown back in the past to pen and paper, confusion abounds, and county commissioners unanimously voted to pay the ransom.Indiana State Police Capt. Dave Bursten told WTHR, “It's like when I came on in the 80s - we're doing everything with pencil and paper.”“We cannot query old information to bring up prior reports or prior court records,” Madison County Sheriff Scott Mellinger told Fox59. “If we want to bring somebody’s record up for something in the future, let’s say for somebody that has been arrested or somebody who is even in jail then we cannot look up information that would help us at a hearing. On the sheriff’s office side, we cannot book people into jail using the computers. We are using pencil and paper like the old days.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware hammers Madison County, Indiana

Madison County, Indiana, population of about 130,000, was the victim of a ransomware attack last week. Government workers without working computers were thrown back in the past to pen and paper, confusion abounds, and county commissioners unanimously voted to pay the ransom.Indiana State Police Capt. Dave Bursten told WTHR, “It's like when I came on in the 80s - we're doing everything with pencil and paper.”“We cannot query old information to bring up prior reports or prior court records,” Madison County Sheriff Scott Mellinger told Fox59. “If we want to bring somebody’s record up for something in the future, let’s say for somebody that has been arrested or somebody who is even in jail then we cannot look up information that would help us at a hearing. On the sheriff’s office side, we cannot book people into jail using the computers. We are using pencil and paper like the old days.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Is Trump’s unexpected victory a failure for big data? Not really

Most election prediction shops and public polls in recent days foresaw Republican Donald Trump losing the U.S. presidential race to Democrat Hillary Clinton.They got it wrong, bigly. And the failed predictions could cast doubts on some hot technology sectors, including big data and customer relationship management.Not so fast, say some data experts. The problem with the polls and with forecasters like FiveThirtyEight may have more to do with data collection than data crunching, they say.Data analysis worked well in the Moneyball model for the Oakland Athletics, but baseball stats are different than election polling, said CRM analyst Denis Pombriant, founder of Beagle Research Group. Statisticians have been collecting "highly reliable" baseball data for more than a century, while polling data is more squishy, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How To Ask A Question At A Conference

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The last time you went to a conference, did you ask any questions? Were you curious about a technology and wanted to know more? Was there something that you didn’t quite get and needed an explanation? Congratulations. You’re in a quiet group of people that ask questions for knowledge. More and more, we are seeing questions becoming a vehicle for more than just knowledge acquisition. If you want to learn how to ask a proper question at a conference, read on.

1. Have A Question

I know it goes without saying, but if you’re going to raise your hand at a conference to ask a question, you should actually have a question in mind. Some people grab a microphone without thinking through what they’re going to say. This leads to stammering and broken thoughts that usually culminate in a random question mark here or there. This makes it difficult for the speaker to figure out what you’re trying to ask.

If you’re going to raise your hand, jot some notes down first. Bullet points help as does making a note or two. This is especially true if the speaker is answering questions before yours. If they answer part of your Continue reading

Getting Hyper About Converged Storage, And Then Some

There is no question that information technology is always too complex, and that people have been complaining about this for over five decades now. It keeps us employed, so perhaps we should not point this out, and moreover, perhaps we should not be so eager to automate ourselves out of jobs. But if the advance of computing from mainframes to artificial intelligence teach us anything, it is that we always want to make IT simpler to get people out of the way of doing business or research.

The founders of hyperconverged systems maker Nutanix learned its lessons from hyperscalers like

Getting Hyper About Converged Storage, And Then Some was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

IBM package brings Watson smarts to everything IoT

IBM has released an experimental program developers can use to embed Watson cognitive intelligence features in all manner of IoT systems from robots and drones to sensors and avatars.IBM says the platform, called Project Intu lets Project Intu offers developers easily build cognitive or basically machine learning skills into a wide variety of operating systems – from Raspberry PI to MacOS, Windows to Linux devices. Devices using Intu can “interact more naturally with users, triggering different emotions and behaviors and creating more meaningful and immersive experience for users.  Developers can simplify and integrate Watson services, such as Conversation, speech-to-text, Language and Visual Recognition, with the capabilities of the “device” to, in essence, act out the interaction with the user,” IBM stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM package brings Watson smarts to everything IoT

IBM has released an experimental program developers can use to embed Watson cognitive intelligence features in all manner of IoT systems from robots and drones to sensors and avatars.IBM says the platform, called Project Intu lets Project Intu offers developers easily build cognitive or basically machine learning skills into a wide variety of operating systems – from Raspberry PI to MacOS, Windows to Linux devices. Devices using Intu can “interact more naturally with users, triggering different emotions and behaviors and creating more meaningful and immersive experience for users.  Developers can simplify and integrate Watson services, such as Conversation, speech-to-text, Language and Visual Recognition, with the capabilities of the “device” to, in essence, act out the interaction with the user,” IBM stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here