virtualbox.org

Hello Folks,

I've got VBoxVMService running on Server 2008 and the only real issue I have with it is adding new VMs to the service. It seems like if you add a new VM to the ini file you have to stop/start the service in order to get the VM going (the command line options don't seem to work.) This is somewhat of a problem for me because the act of starting/stopping the process takes the other VMs down with it. They come right back online because I have the "save state" option indicated in the ini file, but I'd prefer it if I could just have the service reread its config somehow and start the new VMs.

Any way around that?

Thanks

Dan

Dan,

This is a good idea. I've just modified codes to force INI file reloaded every time when VmServiceControl command is executed.

Please download the latest executable files from git and try out:
http://vboxvmservice.git.sourceforge.ne ... 40;hb=HEAD

This will be part of next release if no problem found.

FB2000

Thanks -- I'll try it out when I can.

I looked at the new ini file and one this is sort of puzzling to me -- why are you now requiring a user/pass combo in the file itself? The previous version didn't require this info...?

Thanks

Dan

Hey,

I took a look at your commit and it looked relatively straightforward so I backported your fix to the Watermelon release that I am using on my server. The code with that release was a little different, so I just added
Before all the calls to (4 calls total.) I could have added the code inside the IndexTo.... but that seemed wasteful (why reload it on every single call?)

Anyway the fix seems to work.

Thanks for the tip off.

Dan

debracey wrote: I looked at the new ini file and one this is sort of puzzling to me -- why are you now requiring a user/pass combo in the file itself? The previous version didn't require this info...?

It was because when I ported VBoxVmService codes to use VirtualBox COM API directly (instead of calling VBoxManage.exe), it just didn't work with LocalSystem account. When system is getting rebooted, VBoxVmService fails to access COM API (so as to shutdown VMs) if run as LocalSystem account. This error doesn't happen when VBoxVmService is run as a normal user.

And I am glad to know the forcing INI reload change worked for you.

How would I go about changing the Clipboard mode? I have tried changing it in the GUI on a certain VM as well as in the PREV file but is always reverts back to "Bidirectional" instead of "Disabled". I have tried shutting down the VM (sd )and restarting it ( su ) and the mode doesn't change.

vitalsign0, I don't know anything about Clipboard mode. But to change VM settings you'll need to poweroff the VM first. If you sd the VM with savestate it won't work.

What would be the best way to power off 1 VM while not interrupting service on the other 18 VMs running on the server besides rebooting the server?

vitalsign0 wrote:What would be the best way to power off 1 VM while not interrupting service on the other 18 VMs running on the server besides rebooting the server?

How about login into the VM and issue shutdown command?

That'll work, I was trying to do it by command line.

The problem we're having is that there are about 19 VMs (Windows XP) running on 1 server (Windows 2008). When one person copies something to their clipboard, it will be pasted to someone else's clipboard. So one person will copy text and then is another person hit paste, it will copy the other person's text to their local machine. What would be the best way to prevent this from happening?

Good day.
I will start of by saying thank you for the product and my apologies if this is not the correct place to post this. Please let me know otherwise.

I am using the latest binaries available at sourceforge that include the login/password and the 64bit exe.

My question: Does vboxvmservice require that the VMs themselves are also in the VBOX_USER_HOME directory? It appears that way to me.

D:\Jerry\.VirtualBox has my standard vbox xml files. (not C:\Users etc)
But using the Virtual Box GUI - I changed my install location of VMs to E:\VirtualBox VMs\

I was seeing the "Error finding machine! rc = 0x80bb0001" error when running "vmservicecontrol.exe -st 0"

I was able to work around this by simulating that the xml files and machine names were in the same directory.
Copy all files in D:\Jerry\.VirtualBox to E:\VirtualBox VMs\ --- xml config and vboxsvc logs
Delete D:\Jerry\.VirtualBox folder
Create Windows directory symlink from D:\Jerry\.VirtualBox\ to E:\VirtualBox VMs\
from command prompt: mklink /D "D:\Jerry\.VirtualBox\" "E:\VirtualBox VMs\"

Once this was done, I uninstall the service and reinstalled. My guest OS worked OK and was found just fine.

Also, another the standard VirtualBox GUI works just fine and shows me my VMs.

Just wanted to provide a heads up workaround and request that this be looked into. Creating a symlink won't be possible on server 2003 hosts or earlier (which I am also trying to use this with) because mklink is Windows 7/Server 2008+.

Thanks - Jerry Graciano - jerryg27

jerryg27 wrote:My question: Does vboxvmservice require that the VMs themselves are also in the VBOX_USER_HOME directory? It appears that way to me.

I don't think so. The VBOX_USER_HOME directory is only needed by VirtualBox to look for the main config file (VirtualBox.xml). As long as all the VM related files (HardDisks, Machines, ..., etc) can be accessed by the account you use to run VBoxVmService, they can be anywhere.

And I don't see how creating symlink will help in your case. After you installed VBoxVmService, you'll need to reboot the system once to make sure it find your VMs. If you rebooted your machine after you created the symlink, then that might have made the real difference. If you are not sure, you can try to remove the symlink, and move back your .VirtualBox files and see if it works.

FB2000

VBoxVmService 3.0 - Codename: "Sweet Potato" has arrived.

Read the announcement here:

LINK: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8595&p=194549#p209420

Is this better than VirtualBox Control Service http://vu1tur.eu.org/vboxctrl#download or VboxHeadlessTray viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27767 ?

From a quick look, it seems this allows for the VM to be started without a user needing to be logged on, which I don't think the others support, but if I didn't need that and just want to autostart one VM when WIndows7 boots and logs in automatically as User1, and have the guest SaveState if Windows7 goes to shutdown/standby/hibernate (and resume when it is restarted/woken), would this be the best app for that?

Hey,

I just downloaded and installed the new version. It looks like the problem with adding new VMs to the ini file and doing:

vmservicecontrol.exe -su [number here]

Isn't quite fixed.

I added a new VM number 5 -- and did the command above and the log file has entries like:

Received control command: start 55

So - looks like there's some buffer flushing that needs to happen, because I typed the right number (not 55).

-- Dan