VBox 4.2.8 onwards problem with vboxwebsrv.exe, vboxsvc.exe

[mano]

Hello everyone, I have a small issue with virtualbox 4.2.10 which I'm not sure to classify as a bug or my mistake.

I've been using virtualbox since ver 3.xx on a Win7 x64 host platform with WinXP x86 guests. I use the vboxwebservice (vboxwebsrv.exe) in conjunction with phpvirtualbox for control of my vms using a broswer.

I use Firedaemon Pro Service Manager to start up the vboxwebservice when the host boots up and this has been working flawlessly up till i upgraded to version 4.2.8 recently.

Normally what should happen with this scenario is that when the host boots up - I can access my VM's in my broswer using phpvirtualbox. If i need to make changes to any vm, I can remotely login to the host - start up virtualbox.exe and boot into any vm of my choice - while still having access to the web interface (php virtualbox).

However, with the newer releases what happens is when I set vboxwebservice to start up as a service automatically (using firedaemon) - it works and I am able to access the vm's using phpvirtualbox. When I then login to the desktop on the host machine and try to start up virtualbox - it fails to startup with the following error -

Failed to create Virtualbox Com_Object The Application will now terminate
Details : Callee RC: CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE (0x80080005)

If i go to my task manager and kill the vboxsvc.exe that is started up when the vboxwebsrv.exe is ran by firedaemon at boot - then my virtualbox.exe will start up fine
but this then messes up my phpvirtualbox and I cannot connect to it.

I have tried this suggestion on the forum - about a repair installation using admin privileges
(can't post urls yet sorry

NB - After these problems on the newer versions, I have reverted back to test functionality on VirtualBox 4.1.8 and this works fine. On the newer releases it seems to be broken - which leads me to believe that it could be due to changes made in newer releases but i have not found anything in the changelogs referring to this

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[noteirak]

If you start vboxwebsrv.exe manually, without the use of your service daemon, does it work?

[mano]

Hi noteirak, thank you for replying

yes it works - but it runs as a console application - which affects performance of the host/vms according to phpvirtualbox developers.

Jus out of curiosity - I have enabled interactive services detection - and looking at the console window that pops upafter it initializes properly (after it's initialized by the service daemon)

there is the string

VBoxSVCWatcher Virtualboxclient: detected unresponsive VboxSVC (re=RPC_S_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE 0x800706BA
VBoxSVCWatcher VBoxSVC became unavailable
VBoxSVCWatcher VirtualboxClient: detected working VboxSVC (re=ERROR_SUCCESS)
VboxSVCWatcher VBoxSVC became available

Its important to note that when I launch it manually without the service daemon - this information does not come up

hope that helps -

[noteirak]

The issue is definitly with the config of the service daemon you are using then.
First thing I would check is that the user under which your service and the vboxwebsrv is running is the one with the VMs, and not the system account.

[mano]

Thank you for the suggestion noteirak, however i have checked the settings in firedaemon and compared them to my other production servers running earlier versions of virtualbox (4.08 on 3 Win7 x64 Intel servers ) and its all the same.

To verify this - I have gone and stopped the service in Firedaemon - disabled the service in services.msc and reverted back to 4.2.8, and 4.2.0 and reactivated the service in Firedaemon with the same failing results

With 4.1.8r75467 the setup works flawlessly - So in my humble opinion - looks like something changed when they did their major revision to 4.2.0.

Thanx again noteirak - looks like i will be sticking with 4.1.8r75467 for the time being