After finding a lot of other posts on the topic that didn't work out for me this one did the trick so I'm reposting for my own sense of self preservation.
Copy the Virtualbox autostart plist template file to your system's LaunchDaemons folder.
sudo cp \
/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist \
/Library/LaunchDaemons
Then edit /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist
set Disabled
to false
, set KeepAlive
to true
, and confirm the last string entry in the command array is set to /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg
. The file should look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Disabled</key>
<false/>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>Label</key>
<string>org.virtualbox.vboxautostart</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxAutostartDarwin.sh</string>
<string>--start</string>
<string>/etc/vbox/autostart.cfg</string>
</array>
</dict>
</plist>
Make the directory /etc/vbox
and create the file /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg
with the following content:
default_policy = deny
osxusername = {
allow = true
}
Make sure to change osxusername to the username on your system that the VMs are under.
Next properly set permissions:
sudo chmod +x /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxAutostartDarwin.sh
sudo chown root:wheel /etc/vbox
sudo chown root:wheel /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg
sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist
Now, configure the VMs that should automatically start and set how they should be stopped:
VBoxManage modifyvm vmname --autostart-enabled on
VBoxManage modifyvm vmname --autostop-type acpishutdown
Finally, test the configuration by running:
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist
After a reboot, the VMs that have been set with autostart enabled should be running!
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#autostart-osx
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=51593&start=15#p240724
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=51529#p236492
jgentsch, thanks, I tried your function addition in place of the sleep 60 I was using. Your patch did not help my case. I expect that your function completes its first try. In that case, it is fully completed at boot time. The script does work fine if I run it from a shell after I log in, and it starts the VMs.
So for my case, running VBoxAutostartDarwin.sh does not start any VMs unless some user, local or network, has logged in the newly booted system before it runs. My sleep 60 in VBoxAutostartDarwin.sh gives me window after boot, but before VBoxAutostartDarwin.sh does its real work, to accomplish that. If there is log in, the VMs start. If not, they don't.
Any ideas?