60 lines
4 KiB
XML
60 lines
4 KiB
XML
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
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<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
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<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="autostart-windows">
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<title>Windows: Starting the Autostart Service</title>
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<body>
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<p>On Windows, autostart functionality consist of two components. The first component is a configuration file where
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the administrator can both set a delayed start for the VMs and temporarily disable autostarting for a particular
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user. The configuration file should be located in a folder accessible by all required users but it should have
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permissions allowing only reading by everyone but administrators. The configuration file contains several options.
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The <codeph>default_policy</codeph> controls whether the autostart service allows or denies starting of a VM for
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users that are not in the exception list. The exception list starts with <codeph>exception_list</codeph> and
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contains a comma separated list with usernames. Furthermore, a separate startup delay can be configured for every
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user to avoid overloading the host. A sample configuration is given below: </p>
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<pre xml:space="preserve"> # Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
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default_policy = deny
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# Bob is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them
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# will be delayed for 10 seconds
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bob = {
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allow = true
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startup_delay = 10
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}
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# Alice is not allowed to start virtual machines, useful to exclude certain users
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# if the default policy is set to allow.
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alice = {
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allow = false
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}
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</pre>
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<p>The user name can be specified using the following forms: "user", "domain\user", ".\user" and "user@domain". An
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administrator must add the <codeph>VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG</codeph> environment variable into system variables
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containing the path to the configuration file described above. The environment variable tells the autostart
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services which configuration file is used. </p>
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<p>The second component of autostart functionality is a Windows service. Every instance of this works on behalf of a
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particular user using their credentials. </p>
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<p>To enable autostarting for a particular user, a member of the administrators group must run the following
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command: </p>
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<pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxAutostartSvc install --user=<varname>user</varname> [--password-file=<varname>password_file</varname>]</pre>
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<p>The password file should contain the password followed by a line break. The rest of the file is ignored. The user
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will be asked for a password if the password file is not specified. </p>
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<p>To disable autostarting for particular user, a member of the administrators group must run the following command: </p>
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<pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxAutostartSvc delete --user=<varname>user</varname>
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</pre>
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<p>If a user has changed their password then a member of the administrators group must either reinstall the service
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or change the service credentials using Windows Service Manager. Due to Windows security policies, the autostart
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service cannot be installed for users with empty passwords. </p>
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<p>Finally, the user should define which VMs should be started at boot. The user should run the following command
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for every VM they want to start at boot: </p>
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<pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage modifyvm <varname>VM name or UUID</varname> --autostart-enabled on</pre>
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<p>The user can remove a particular VM from the VMs starting at boot by running the following command: </p>
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<pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage modifyvm <varname>VM name or UUID</varname> --autostart-enabled off</pre>
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<note>
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<p>On Windows hosts, starting VMs by using the autostart service might cause some issues, as the virtual machines
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are starting within the same session as VBoxSVC. For more information see <xref
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href="vboxsvc-session-0.dita#vboxsvc-session-0"/>. </p>
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</note>
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</body>
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</topic>
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