| 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-windows">
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| 4 | <title>Windows: Starting the Autostart Service</title>
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| 5 |
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| 6 | <body>
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| 7 | <p>On Windows, autostart functionality consist of two components. The first component is a configuration file where
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| 8 | the administrator can both set a delayed start for the VMs and temporarily disable autostarting for a particular
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| 9 | user. The configuration file should be located in a folder accessible by all required users but it should have
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| 10 | permissions allowing only reading by everyone but administrators. The configuration file contains several options.
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| 11 | The <codeph>default_policy</codeph> controls whether the autostart service allows or denies starting of a VM for
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| 12 | users that are not in the exception list. The exception list starts with <codeph>exception_list</codeph> and
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| 13 | contains a comma separated list with usernames. Furthermore, a separate startup delay can be configured for every
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| 14 | user to avoid overloading the host. A sample configuration is given below: </p>
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| 15 | <pre xml:space="preserve"> # Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
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| 16 | default_policy = deny
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| 17 |
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| 18 | # Bob is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them
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| 19 | # will be delayed for 10 seconds
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| 20 | bob = {
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| 21 | allow = true
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| 22 | startup_delay = 10
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| 23 | }
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| 24 |
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| 25 | # Alice is not allowed to start virtual machines, useful to exclude certain users
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| 26 | # if the default policy is set to allow.
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| 27 | alice = {
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| 28 | allow = false
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| 29 | }
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| 30 | </pre>
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| 31 | <p>The user name can be specified using the following forms: "user", "domain\user", ".\user" and "user@domain". An
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| 32 | administrator must add the <codeph>VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG</codeph> environment variable into system variables
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| 33 | containing the path to the configuration file described above. The environment variable tells the autostart
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| 34 | services which configuration file is used. </p>
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| 35 | <p>The second component of autostart functionality is a Windows service. Every instance of this works on behalf of a
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| 36 | particular user using their credentials. </p>
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| 37 | <p>To enable autostarting for a particular user, a member of the administrators group must run the following
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| 38 | command: </p>
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| 39 | <pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxAutostartSvc install --user=<varname>user</varname> [--password-file=<varname>password_file</varname>]</pre>
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| 40 | <p>The password file should contain the password followed by a line break. The rest of the file is ignored. The user
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| 41 | will be asked for a password if the password file is not specified. </p>
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| 42 | <p>To disable autostarting for particular user, a member of the administrators group must run the following command: </p>
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| 43 | <pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxAutostartSvc delete --user=<varname>user</varname>
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| 44 | </pre>
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| 45 | <p>If a user has changed their password then a member of the administrators group must either reinstall the service
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| 46 | or change the service credentials using Windows Service Manager. Due to Windows security policies, the autostart
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| 47 | service cannot be installed for users with empty passwords. </p>
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| 48 | <p>Finally, the user should define which VMs should be started at boot. The user should run the following command
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| 49 | for every VM they want to start at boot: </p>
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| 50 | <pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage modifyvm <varname>VM name or UUID</varname> --autostart-enabled on</pre>
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| 51 | <p>The user can remove a particular VM from the VMs starting at boot by running the following command: </p>
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| 52 | <pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage modifyvm <varname>VM name or UUID</varname> --autostart-enabled off</pre>
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| 53 | <note>
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| 54 | <p>On Windows hosts, starting VMs by using the autostart service might cause some issues, as the virtual machines
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| 55 | are starting within the same session as VBoxSVC. For more information see <xref
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| 56 | href="vboxsvc-session-0.dita#vboxsvc-session-0"/>. </p>
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| 57 | </note>
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| 58 | </body>
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| 59 |
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| 60 | </topic>
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