Auto startup and shutdown for VMs

[mark_orion]

It would be good to have an option to allow (headless ?) VMs to be started automatically on host boot and gracefully shut down when the host shuts down. I know that scripts exist, but configuring this in an easy and uncomplicated way via the GUI would be a great enhancement.

[Ju52]

I really want to endorse this feature request! Using GPO-triggered shutdown-scripts on a Windows host doesn't help, because the VBox-GUI is shown *before* these shutdown-scripts are run - pausing the hosts shutdown process waiting for user interaction.

I suggest to implement the following options in the virtual machine's properties:

1) Start machine with host (yes/no)

2) Delay after host starts (seconds)

3) Shutdown with host (yes/no)

4) Primary shutdown action (savestate/acpipowerbutton/poweroff/show GUI)

5) Allowed time for step 4 / shutdown (seconds)

6) Secondary shutdown action (if primary shutdown action fails) (poweroff/show GUI and wait for user interaction)

7) Allowed time for user interaction when showing GUI in step 6 [when there is no user reaction within this deadline: poweroff / forced shutdown is initiated]

1)+ 2) could be done by a startup-script of course. So these two are just "nice-to-have".

[ionelmc]

Any changes on this? At least some formal response like "we don't want to implement this any time soon" ?

[Frank Mehnert]

Read the user manual. As of VirtualBox 4.2.0 there is basic support for VM autostart/stop on certain hosts. We are working on extending the support to all hosts (i.e. there is currently no support for Windows hosts) with a low priority. There might be also GUI support eventually but currently we are not working on this.

[davor]

"Read the user manual. As of VirtualBox 4.2.0 there is basic support for VM autostart/stop on certain hosts." --> Can you be more specific. I have been searching half a day already. And all I find are references to third party software.

Auto start is easy set through scheduling and vboxmanage. The most important is a setting to SaveState once host shutdown is initiated. Can this be set somehow?

[aeichner]

See here.