An utility to start up automatically a set of Virtual Machines if they are not running.

autoStarter.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
:'
# VM AutoStarter

An utility to start up automatically a set of Virtual Machines 
if they are not running.

This utility was tested on a Debian 7.5 with VirtualBox 4.3.

## Usage

- In the host machine that runs VirtualBox add the names of the 
Virtual Machines that you want to monitor by editing the line:

 declare -a VMs=("name of VM1" "name of VM2" "name of VM3")

- Now copy this script (autoStarter.sh) to the home folder of the user 
that runs the Virtual Machines and check if the script is executable by 
the user. If not, change its permissions to 755 by:

 chmod 755 ~/autoStarter.sh

- Then add the following line to the crontab (crontab -e).

 */5 * * * * ~/autoStarter.sh > /dev/null

With this setting every 5 minutes a cronjob checks if the 
Virtual Machines are running, and starts up the ones that are not.

## Authors

[Antonio Rebordao](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebordao)
'

# !!! Add here the names of the VMs that you want to monitor !!!
declare -a VMs=("name of VM1" "name of VM2" "name of VM3")

# Loops over all VMs
for VM in "${VMs[@]}"; do

    # For each VM checks if it's running
    if vboxmanage showvminfo $VM | grep "^\State: *running" > /dev/null; then
        : # Does nothing
    else
        # Starts VM
        echo "Starting VM $VM..." 
        vboxmanage startvm "$VM" --type headless
        sleep 10
    fi
done