virtualbox 5.1.2 on ubuntu 16.04.1 does not find my vm's

[spicysomtam]

When I spin up the gui it does not find any vm's. Even 'VBoxManage list vms' doesnt. However if I create a test vm, it creates it in the same dir along with my other vm's:

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amunro@laptop11 ~ $ ls VirtualBox\ VMs/ -l
total 44
drwxr-xr-x 3 amunro amunro 4096 Sep 12  2015 cent4-client-1
drwxr-xr-x 3 amunro amunro 4096 Jul 26  2014 cent5-client-1
drwx------ 3 amunro amunro 4096 Jun 20 21:14 cent6-client-1
drwxr-xr-x 3 amunro amunro 4096 Jul 26  2014 cent6-client-2
drwxr-xr-x 3 amunro amunro 4096 Jul  1 23:36 cent6-master-1
drwxr-xr-x 2 amunro amunro 4096 Jul 29 00:14 test
drwxr-xr-x 3 amunro amunro 4096 May  2  2015 ub1404
drwxr-xr-x 4 amunro amunro 4096 Jun 17 18:57 win7 32
drwxr-xr-x 3 amunro amunro 4096 Jul  5 21:06 win7 64
drwxr-xr-x 4 amunro amunro 4096 Jun 17 19:04 WinXP 32
amunro@laptop11 ~ $ VBoxManage list vms
"test" {a7d42617-6bab-43ad-a93a-2e997a8b1d5d}

I am sure I upgraded to 5.1.2 in ubuntu 14.04 and it found all my vm's fine.

[spicysomtam]

I fixed it. My ubuntu 16.04.01 was a reinstall rather than upgrade; upgrade failed but that is another story. I am actually running Mint 18 which is based on ubuntu. It was better to say I was using ubuntu 16.04.1 as mint 18 is ubuntu with tweaks for the gui.

I removed my test vm (wiped from disk), then:

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$ sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-5.1
$ rm -rf ~/.config/VirtualBox
$ cp -rp /media/data/root-copy/home/amunro/.VirtualBox/ .config/ # My backup before ubuntu upgrade
$ mv .config/{.,}VirtualBox/

Reinstalled virtualbox, and I have all my vm's back. Voila!

Oddly the VirtualBox config moved from ~/.VirtualBox to ~/.config/VirtualBox. Maybe I have been upgrading from a very early version?

Hopefully this will help someone in a similar situation.