Execute Command after VM Booted - bash

Question

I've gotten sick of how many steps it takes me to get started in the morning. Yes it only takes me a few minutes to start up my whole environment, but I'd really rather just run a single command on boot-up and be ready to go immediately.
I'm writing an app on Rails connected to SqlServer. To develop for it I have a local version of the DB I use on a VM. My manual process goes like this:
Run VirtualBox.
Start the VM.
When the VM is done booting:
Open terminal
Run `rails s`
When rails is done starting:
open browser
navigate to localhost:3000 and start developing
Run Sublime
I'd love to do this in one script:
VirtualBox Windows7 &
sublime &
google-chrome &
But I can't figure out how to run this command only once the VM is done booting:
gnome-terminal --working-directory=git/my_project --tab -e 'rails s' --tab -e 'git status'
Also, it'd be nice (but not necessary) to have chrome start after rails s has succeeded.
Is this even possible?
I'm not opposed to polling, but it feels like this is something VirtualBox should be able to do a bit more naturally.
EDIT
From Comment:
I'm using Host-Only network with two Bridged Interfaces (one for wireless and one for wired) available. (It allows me to use the VM whether or not I'm connected to a network, and lets me freely switch between wired and wireless without noticing the difference).

Answer 1

Here is how I would do:
In the VM, create a script which will find the default gateway, & keep pinging to it. & add it to user's startup. (needs parsing of ipconfig /all which can be done with vbscript/python.)
In host, look at the network interface between host & VM. Find the default gateway on host (parse route -n output in bash script). Since both use same physical interface, the gateway would be same (assuming NAT & ONE physical interface). Use tcpdump, to wait for the ping packets to the gateway.
"Default gateway" was chosen because that was something host & VM can find out independent of each other. Other alternative was to hard-code host's address.
After the host tcpdump on host exits, it means that the VM is alive & booted upto windows desktop.

Answer 2

I looked into this line of inquiry before, and I think Devil's Pie is the closest you can get to setting that up:
http://burtonini.com/blog/computers/devilspie

Answer 3

You could try starting with this (VBoxManager startvm):
How to automatically start and shut down VirtualBox machines?
and then look at some working scripts to add to your init.d and/or rc.local once your VM is up to finish the rest of the job in order:
Get To Know Linux: The /etc/init.d Directory

Answer 4

I needed to orchestrate something similar. I'm using a Windows VM (guest) as a proxy (it runs a Windows-only corporate VPN client) for my Linux laptop (host). The approach is to fully automate the guest and wait until it's ready:
The host must have no funky routes (yet)
The VM starts and runs a powershell script (via Windows Task Scheduler, run-on-startup) that connects the VPN client and sets up ICS (Internet Connection Sharing, basically routing).
The host now adds funky routes that send some traffic via the VM's host-only interface. If it added these routes too soon, step 2 would not work.
The VM also runs squid (http proxy) and its port is NAT port forwarded from the host, so localhost:3128 actually goes to the guest. So a curl using this proxy goes to the corporate network and indicates whether the guest is fully up and connected.
(Squid is also useful as a backup to this complicated but very convenient mechanism, I can still ssh via corkscrew, etc)
So, I run this script on the host (simplified version shown):
#!/bin/bash
VM=vm #Name of the Virtual Machine
SCRIPT_DIR=/some/dir
PROXY_ADDRESS=localhost:3128
REMOTE_CURL_HOST=any.corporate.hostname
function waitloop() {
echo -n "Waiting to hear from $REMOTE_CURL_HOST "
while ! curl -s -m 5 --proxy $PROXY_ADDRESS $REMOTE_CURL_HOST > /dev/null ; do
echo -n .
sleep 10
done
echo "!"
}
# a separate script that takes down my routes, you may not need this.
bash $SCRIPT_DIR/network-config-vboxnet0.sh down
# error is OK if it's already running
vboxmanage startvm $VM
waitloop && bash $SCRIPT_DIR/network-config-vboxnet0.sh up && echo "Completed"
Essentially, the script waits until curl works through the VM.