Auto starting/stopping Linux virtual machine with VirtualBox on Win7 host
Sorry, not entirely on topic here... I have a working ubuntu-server virtual machine, on a Win7 host. I need to make that virtual machine start automatically when Windows starts, and also have it shut down gracefully when Windows shuts down. Only one of these bits is really on topic: assuming I can send an ACPI shutdown signal to the virtual machine, what do I need to do in order to get the VM to shutdown? Anyone who can advise the correct method to run/stop the VM on Windows start/stop from the Windows end I'd also love to hear from you.... All my Googling so far (no doubt with the wrong search!) seems to be finding me support for a Linux host and a Windows virtual machine. I'm hoping that someone else here just happens to have done what I need! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG
On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 03:28:52PM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
Sorry, not entirely on topic here...
I have a working ubuntu-server virtual machine, on a Win7 host. I need to make that virtual machine start automatically when Windows starts, and also have it shut down gracefully when Windows shuts down.
Only one of these bits is really on topic: assuming I can send an ACPI shutdown signal to the virtual machine, what do I need to do in order to get the VM to shutdown?
Anyone who can advise the correct method to run/stop the VM on Windows start/stop from the Windows end I'd also love to hear from you....
All my Googling so far (no doubt with the wrong search!) seems to be finding me support for a Linux host and a Windows virtual machine. I'm hoping that someone else here just happens to have done what I need!
I spent a lot of effort trying to do this the other way around (Windows XP virtual machine in Linux host) but never really found a good answer. The virtualbox command line utilities were what I found got me nearest to what I wanted. Getting the virtual machine to *start* is generally fairly easy, assuming Win7 still has an 'autoexec.bat' type of utility which it runs at startup (even though it's run *by* the startup process rather than being the startup process) then all you need to do is run the VirtualBox command line to start the guest machine. Shutting the guest down and giving it time to shut down before the host system pulls the plug on it is *much* more difficult. No one seems to provide 'shutting down' hooks any more and, even if they do, they don't like waiting for as long as a guest machine may take to shut down. So I'm not much help really, I'm just comiserating! :-) -- Chris Green
On 28/02/11 16:04, Chris G wrote:
Getting the virtual machine to *start* is generally fairly easy,
Indeed, all I needed there was a batch file: @echo off "c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage" startvm "my vm name" .. whilst noting that "my vm name" is case sensitive, which threw me to start with, it being a Windows host and all.
Shutting the guest down and giving it time to shut down before the host system pulls the plug on it is *much* more difficult.
That's what I thought :-( I did get my box to respond to the ACPI shutdown as issued from VirtualBox's Machine menu, simply with: sudo apt-get install acpid .. which was a lot simpler than I expected from the first few pages of ramblings that I came across. But as you say, unless that's triggered on shutdown that's not a huge benefit to me...
So I'm not much help really, I'm just comiserating! :-)
Thanks anyway! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG
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