How do I disable auto pause?

[davethewave]

Linux Mint x64 Host
Windows 7 x64 Guest
Virtualbox 6.1

I want to disable automatic pause on I/O read error. How might I do this? It should not automatic pause while I am attempting file recovery. Thanks

[mpack]

Automatic pause only happens on physical (host) I/O errors, so I'm not sure why a VM would be involved in that. Anyway no, VirtualBox can't continue, so this feature can't sensibly be disabled AFAIK. You need to fix physical filesystem errors on the host first, e.g. by moving the VM to a different drive or different PC. Any guest filesystem corruption can then be repaired.

I.e. fix the source of the error first.

[davethewave]

It is when accessing a physically linked disk with bad sectors, it's a damaged drive that cannot be repaired, only recover data from after several read attempts. The host disk has no issues. I scanned it, and it's good to go. Just the disk I'm working on its messed up.
How would I insensibly disable auto pause on I/O error?

Host disk /dev/sda working good. Scanned from live Linux disk, no issues.
Running Windows inside virtual box from healthy drive. Secondary Physical vmdk linked to damaged (guest) disk causing pauses on read attempts.

[mpack]

Topic moved to "Linux Hosts".

You seem to be asking the same question again that I already answered.

There is no way to disable "auto pause" that I know of, but it only happens on physical host errors, so the host partition containing the damaged VDI cannot be "working good". I already mentioned the correct procedure to fix: move the VM folder to a new drive or a new PC. This assumes the default file organization since you did not originally mention anything contrary. If a VDI has for some reason been moved outside the VM folder then it's the VDI that needs to be moved to another drive, using normal host file copy commands. You'll want a host tool that can ignore errors.

I will need to see a VM log before I make any further comment. With the VM fully shut down, right click it in the GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip file. Attach the zip here. Ideally provide a log which shows the error.

[davethewave]

You seem to still think the host is damaged in some way when I already explained that it is not. I appreciate your reply, I only asked again to reiterate because you misunderstand the problem and are wrong about the host system having the error. I figured with the updated information you might know a way to disable the automatic pause. If I can get around to it I will attempt to look at the code, comment out pausing in general and compile.

[scottgus1]

A workaround to recompiling with the pause code commented out (I would shudder at having to do that myself...) is to run a script that monitors the output of

vboxmanage showvminfo "guestname"

for the text:

State:                       paused

then issues the command:

vboxmanage controlvm "guestname" resume

[davethewave]

A workaround to recompiling with the pause code commented out (I would shudder at having to do that myself...) is to run a script that monitors the output of

vboxmanage showvminfo "guestname"

for the text:

State:                       paused

then issues the command:

vboxmanage controlvm "guestname" resume

My mom is in the hospital so I haven't been able to find time until today. I'm not too sure how to make the script but a simple watch -n1 worked well. Thanks!!

[scottgus1]

Glad you found a solution! And we hope your mom is feeling better.