virtualbox.org

I'm getting this error:

root@henry:~# vboxmanage modifyvm Stepney --autostart-enabled on
VBoxManage: error: Adding machine 'Stepney' to the autostart database failed with VERR_FILE_TOO_BIG
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED (0x8000ffff), component SessionMachine, interface IMachine, callee nsISupports
VBoxManage: error: Context: "COMSETTER(AutostartEnabled)(ValueUnion.f)" at line 2688 of file VBoxManageModifyVM.cpp

I'm running:

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Linux henry 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.36-1+deb8u2 (2016-10-19) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Disk space is not an issue as the VMs are on the local disk

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/dev/sda1                226G  146G   68G  69% /

root@henry:~# ls -ls /opt/VMS/
total 32
4 drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Dec 30 06:56 Bertram
4 drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Dec 30 07:25 Edward
4 drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Dec 30 07:01 Gordon
4 drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Dec 30 06:55 James
4 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 30 08:17 Stepney
4 drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Dec 30 07:25 Toby
4 drwx------ 3 root root 4096 Dec 30 06:55 Wilburt

When I started the install I added two VM's to autostart: Edward and Toby, but after a restart I have not been able to add the others as I get the same error.

I'm running the stable version of VirtualBox on Debian:

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root@henry:/# vboxmanage --version
4.3.36_Debianr105129

root@henry:/# cat /etc/default/virtualbox
# Defaults for virtualbox initscript
# sourced by /etc/init.d/virtualbox
# installed at /etc/default/virtualbox by the maintainer scripts

#
# This is a POSIX shell fragment
#

# Set this to 1 if you would like the virtualbox modules to be loaded by
# the init script.
LOAD_VBOXDRV_MODULE=1

# SHUTDOWN_USERS="foo bar"
#   check for running VMs of user 'foo' and user 'bar'
#   'all' checks for all active users
# SHUTDOWN=poweroff
# SHUTDOWN=acpibutton
# SHUTDOWN=savestate
#   select one of these shutdown methods for running VMs
#   acpibutton and savestate causes the init script to wait
#   30 seconds for the VMs to shutdown
SHUTDOWN_USERS="all"
SHUTDOWN=savestate

#
# virtualbox defaults file
VBOXAUTOSTART_DB=/etc/vbox
VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG=/etc/vbox/autostart.cfg

root@henry:/# cat /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg
# Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
default_policy = deny
# Create an entry for each user allowed to run autostart
root = {
allow = true
startup_delay = 25
}
jad = {
allow = true
startup_delay = 25
}

root@henry:/etc/vbox# ls -l /etc/vbox
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 236 Dec 27 10:34 autostart.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   0 Dec 30 08:48 root.start
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   0 Dec 30 08:48 root.stop

Suggestions? Comments? Questions?

By "adding a machine" I assume you mean import, since simply adding a machine doesn't involve copying any files, and that looks like a file copy error.

VERR_FILE_TOO_BIG means that the file is too big for the host filesystem. Typically, it means that the target uses the a FAT filesystem and are trying to import a VM which includes a file which is larger than 4GB, and hence exceeds the FAT limit. However, it could also simply mean that the chosen host partition is too small for a file.

I'll follow up my own post to confirm the solution.

I logged into the server via putty (from windows 10) to Linux server (Henry) as jad. I then su (su - actually) to do what I need to configure, etc... I noticed that I had an entry for jad in the autostart.cfg file, but no jad.start or jad.stop in the same folder. So I created them (touch jad.start jad.stop and then I attempted to configure the VMs for autostart.

Lo and behold that allowed it to work. Even though the UID was 0 (from the su -) somehow vboxmanage "knwew" what my real UID was.

Sigh. I wish the error had been more to the point (access denied, or some such) but file to big (file too (sic) big) did not give me the right hint.

Hopefully this will solve it for some other user...

virtualbox.org

VBoxManage: error: Adding machine 'Stepney' to the autostart database failed with VERR_FILE_TOO_BIG

VBoxManage: error: Adding machine 'Stepney' to the autostart database failed with VERR_FILE_TOO_BIG

Re: VBoxManage: error: Adding machine 'Stepney' to the autostart database failed with VERR_FILE_TOO_

Re: VBoxManage: error: Adding machine 'Stepney' to the autostart database failed with VERR_FILE_TOO_