lock virtualbox to only open one instance at a time

[mikeybo]

Hi, is there a way to lock virtualbox so the user can only open one box instance at a time and not multiple?

I was thinking of select in settings for each instance to use MAX available ram, so the automatically Vbox doesn't let you open another same time, is there another way other than that?

[socratis]

I was thinking of select in settings for each instance to use MAX available ram, so the automatically Vbox doesn't let you open another same time, is there another way other than that?

I'm afraid that even that is not a way to do it. VirtualBox will not prevent you from doing something stupid, like opening two VMs (or three or more) with the maximum allocated resources that your host can afford. It will simply crash at some point. Which VM will crash is not something I can tell with certainty.

There is no way, AFAIK, to launch one and only one VM. Not out-of-the-box at least. Maybe you could try a workaround with a custom script of sorts.