1

I work primarily from a Mac with Fusion and several VM's for a given purpose. Can someone point me in the direction of a purpose built VM that is command line only, No GUI.

Or possible some bread crumbs to create a VM.

D.Munyak
  • 11
  • ehm I would assume you could download Ubuntu Server and install that into a VM?! Nothing particularly different than installing it with a desktop? Or if you want: use a desktop and remove the desktop afterwards? What seems to be your problem with this? – Rinzwind Jul 27 '16 at 17:21
  • no problem, just looking for a purpose built VM for console only. while on my Mac and VPN into work, I need access to a console outside of a tunnel, to access AWS ec instances, and have no need for the GUI bloat. – D.Munyak Jul 27 '16 at 17:39

1 Answers1

1

@Rinzwind is correct, you can just download a server or minimal/net install ISO of Debian or Ubuntu and install it very quickly as a VM. I did this yesterday using a Debian net install ISO, it's quick to download and install, and you are left with nothing but a beautiful, flashing prompt. Here's a direct link. https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst Just uncheck Debian Desktop Environment and select if you need servers when the menu ask.

You could also check here http://www.osboxes.org for a prebuilt machine, but I felt it was more hassle than building my own.I didn't see a CLI only download for Debian, but perhaps they'll have another distro. By time you search you could probably have built one.

You could also just clone one of your running VM and remove X and the DE.

There's three options for you. Good luck.

Psyoma
  • 58
  • Awesome. I hope it works out for you. :) – Psyoma Jul 27 '16 at 20:11
  • I run LinuxLite in Fusion. It was purpose built light weight distro. https://www.linuxliteos.com/

    cloned existing working LinuxLite (GUI), then disabled GUI within Grub http://askubuntu.com/questions/16371/how-do-i-disable-x-at-boot-time-so-that-the-system-boots-in-text-mode which now loads a console only LinuxLite Ubuntu VM into console

    sudo vi /etc/default/grub GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text" sudo update-grub

    I still have network access, confirmed by ifconfig and simple ping test.

     – D.Munyak Jul 28 '16 at 17:03