| 1 | <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
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| 2 | <!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
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| 3 | <topic xml:lang="en-us" id="autostart-linux">
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| 4 | <title>Linux: Starting the Autostart Service With init</title>
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| 5 |
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| 6 | <body>
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| 7 | <p>
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| 8 | On Linux, the autostart service is activated by setting two
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| 9 | variables in <filepath>/etc/default/virtualbox</filepath>. The
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| 10 | first one is <codeph>VBOXAUTOSTART_DB</codeph> which contains
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| 11 | an absolute path to the autostart database directory. The
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| 12 | directory should have write access for every user who should be
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| 13 | able to start virtual machines automatically. Furthermore the
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| 14 | directory should have the sticky bit set. The second variable is
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| 15 | <codeph>VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG</codeph> which points the service
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| 16 | to the autostart configuration file which is used during boot to
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| 17 | determine whether to allow individual users to start a VM
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| 18 | automatically and configure startup delays. The configuration
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| 19 | file can be placed in <filepath>/etc/vbox</filepath> and
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| 20 | contains several options. One is
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| 21 | <codeph>default_policy</codeph> which controls whether the
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| 22 | autostart service allows or denies to start a VM for users which
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| 23 | are not in the exception list. The exception list starts with
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| 24 | <codeph>exception_list</codeph> and contains a comma separated
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| 25 | list with usernames. Furthermore a separate startup delay can be
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| 26 | configured for every user to avoid overloading the host. A
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| 27 | sample configuration is given below:
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| 28 | </p>
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| 29 | <pre xml:space="preserve"># Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
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| 30 | default_policy = deny
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| 31 |
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| 32 | # Bob is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them
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| 33 | # will be delayed for 10 seconds
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| 34 | bob = {
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| 35 | allow = true
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| 36 | startup_delay = 10
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| 37 | }
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| 38 |
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| 39 | # Alice is not allowed to start virtual machines, useful to exclude certain users
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| 40 | # if the default policy is set to allow.
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| 41 | alice = {
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| 42 | allow = false
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| 43 | }
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| 44 | </pre>
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| 45 | <p>
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| 46 | Any user who wants to enable autostart for individual machines
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| 47 | must set the path to the autostart database directory with the
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| 48 | following command:
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| 49 | </p>
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| 50 | <pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage setproperty autostartdbpath <varname>autostart-directory</varname>
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| 51 | </pre>
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| 52 | </body>
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| 53 |
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| 54 | </topic>
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