Epsisode 5 - Automajically Starting Virtualbox 4.x VMs

Firstly, you need to create/edit the file /etc/default/virtualbox and add a few variables.


VBOXAUTOSTART_DB which contains an absolute path to the autostart database directory and
VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG which contains the location of the autostart config settings. The file should look similar to this:

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

Now we need to create the /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg file and add..
# Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
default_policy = allow
# Create an entry for each user allowed to run autostart
root ={
allow = true
startup_delay = 1
}

Set permissions on directory to the vboxuser group and make sure users can write to the directory as well as sticky bit.

root@home:~ sudo chgrp vboxusers /etc/vbox
root@home:~ sudo chmod 1775/etc/vbox

root@home:~ sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers vbox

MAKE SURE YOU ARE LOGGED IN AS ROOT - SUDO IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH! or do sudo -s

root@home:~ VBoxManage setproperty autostartdbpath /etc/vbox
root@home:~ VBoxManage modifyvm windows7 --autostart-enabled on

root@home:~ touch /etc/vbox/root.start
root@home:~ chmod 755 /etc/vbox/root.start
root@home:~ chmod 777 /etc/vbox/root.start

root@home:~ nano /etc/rc.local and add the lines

/etc/init.d/vboxdrv start
/etc/init.d/vboxautostart-service start

place these BEFORE the "exit 0"

reboot and you should be set to go!
Good Luck!