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Ubuntu Zesty is still relatively new. Recently, i installed a VM and during install, i opted for autologin.
That worked just fine after the install.
Next, i went on to install the guest additions (after having also installed build-essentials). Those are working fine too.
But surprise: The autologin no longer does!
I am not able to pinpoint to the cause, as there are more than 3000 files changed after the install of the guest additions, and the relevant gdm3.conf file still has the proper information. Nonetheless, the GA somehow interferes with autologin.
This report comes from VBox 5.1.30.

Can someone verify and evetually report this (escalate to tracking system)?

Post the guests log file ( as an attachment ). Right click on the guest in the Main Manager then click show log. Save and post as an attachment. Compress if it is too large to post.

log.zip attached

Your log shows Zesty (17.10) but Ubuntu 17.10 is really (Artful Aardvark).

With that said can you confirm that you are using wayland and not xorg?

OMG: Thx for pointing out this misunderstanding!

After many years of using Ubuntu, i left it behind and switched to debian for the host.
And when i installed one VM with Ubuntu, i chose the latest (17.10) and did not find its correct naming. yesterday, a friend told me, that Zesty is in fact incorrect. So i went on to rename the VM tonight, after my post, to Aardwark.

The problem still persists:
- autologin is working fine after the install and before installing guest additions
- after installing build-essentials and GA, autologin no longer works

Can i rename the Thread? i dont know how.

That's fine but you did not answer my only question, are you using wayland or Xorg?

I dont know. How to find out?
See:

Run the following in the guests terminal: If it says ubuntu then you are running wayland. If it says ubuntu-xorg your are running Xorg.

Thanks a lot.
I am running xorg.

Really, i did nothing else than to download the 17.10 ISO and install.
Only after also installing the GA, autologin ceased to work.

Look at Ubuntu guests system tools -> details -> users and see if your user is still enabled to auto login. I have tested this myself and can not find a reason why just the installation of the guest additions would change anything to prevent you logging in at boot. In other words I can not reproduce this here.

Thank you, PerryG! You seem to be working day and night, even on the week-ends. Very kind of you to look into this problem with me!

very interesting observations - still clueless, makes me ::
First: i had already been looking for the UI to turn aulogin on again, couldnt find it without your hint. (Thx!)
After making sure, autologin was turned on again (which was in fact off after installation of GA), still no autologin happening.
Even more strange: after making sure, its turned on again, and a reboot (manually logging in, see above), the UI reports, it is turned off again.
Could be interesting:
I did create a snapshot after successful installation of Aardwark, where autologin is working. And thus it is easy to recreate the problem: just installing GA and its no longer logging in automatically.
At least over here, it is easy to reproduce. But i dont have US language settings, couldnt imagine anything else, that would be special.
Sorry for being late. somehow, i never get a notification, if something is happening here.

I really don't know what else to tell you at the moment. I will look into this some more tomorrow but you might want to ask the Ubuntu folks if they have seen this as well.

Quick check show that even on metal the AL fails. https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2372948

You might want to sign on to that topic and see what they can do to helps as well.

Excellent job there!

After finishing my post yesterday, it crossed my mind, that the description given in fact points to an Ubuntu problem rather than a vbox problem. And boom! You already found the confirmation!

Ok. Even though, there is no solution yet, i thank you very much. You restored trust to the great virtualbox software

Over and out.