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
@excessivedemon it looks like the only difference (compared to OP) is the inclusion of
RunAtLoad
andLaunchOnlyOnce
? For me, those keys were already included in the source file (/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist
) after installing VirtualBox 5.0.16 r105871 on OS X 10.10.5 and OS X 10.11.4.