Starting a VM with ssh: VBoxHeadless keeps the shell alive

[enrico.m.crisostomo]

Hi all.

I'm experiencing the following problem with VBoxHeadless: I just want to start a VM from an SSH session to a Solaris Nevada box but VBoxHeadless only returns when the virtual machine shuts down. Although I try to launch it with nohup, such as in:

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$ nohup VBoxHeadless ... &

I won't be able to exit the sheel until the VM shuts down. VBoxManage startvm, on the other hand, doesn't exhibit this problem but, as far as I can read in VirtualBox official documentation, VBoxManage startvm is deprecated in favor of specific backend commands (such as VBoxHeadless in the case of an headless VM.)

Is there any known workaround?

Thanks in advance,
Enrico

[enrico.m.crisostomo]

Ok, after a heavy headache and a session of trial-and-error, I discovered that the problem is not the standard output (or error) as I thought it was: it was standard input. I don't really know if it's an openssh problem, but this command works as expected:

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$ nohup VBoxHeadless ... </dev/null &

I can exit the ssh session and the VM keeps running.

Thanks anyway,
Enrico