Enabling Autostart of VirtualBox-VMs on FreeNAS

[byron]

I use bridged mode without issue. Does it change number every reboot? If I remember correctly the last time this happened to me I updated freenas to latest version and rebooted. I'm assuming you have done this. You could also try blowing away vbox and just rebuild it. Doesn't take long.

You should see the epairs applied each reboot in the console and they should be the same each time. It's possible some other jail is screwing things up as well.

 

[qwerion]

My experience with this trying to autostart a Mint 17.2 VM:
I seem to be having issues with savestate and acpipowerbutton options, where the former results in a screwed up/unusable VM on reboot (no networking available, unable to start any programs), and the latter results in booting to recovery and requiring manual intervention.

I have to use poweroff in order to get a working VM after a reboot. This doesn't seem optimal, but I'm not running anything on there where a hard shutoff (OpenVPN server, Plex server) should cause any problems...I think.

 

[naq90]

I followed the instructions per your guide, but on 9.10 I'm running into an error where the virtualbox gui will no longer load, let alone autostart a vm. Does this need to be amended for 9.10?

 

[Dudleydogg]

I updated to 9.10 and the biggest issue was the Bridged networking, that is the buggest part of Virtual Box. IF I leave the Epair alone and start the Jail Freenas Will Crash reboot.
Start the jail, Go fix all the Epair's bridge adapters choose the current one. Then start your VM's.
IF you have auto start enabled and the Epair is miss matched your Jail or even Freenas could crash right after rebooting.

 

[Joakim Ollila]

I had this working in Freenas 9.3 But when I now did reinstall the server with 9.10 I can't get it to work. When i update the rc.conf file and restart the jail my freenas server crashes and restarts when it is up and running I then manually need to start the vm and it works ok. Just gets frustrating to need to start it everytime the server goes down. I have windows 7 running with blueiris on it for surveillance. So it isn't optimal that the vm don't start automatically because then it don't record.. I used bridged adapter in 9.3 and I use it now too.. Has someone any idea how to get this working again?

 

[pbarata]

It's possible do change VirtualBox to VMWare?

 

[danb35]

No.

 

[bernieTB]

I followed the instructions per your guide, but on 9.10 I'm running into an error where the virtualbox gui will no longer load, let alone autostart a vm. Does this need to be amended for 9.10?

Same issue here - these instructions don't seem to work on 9.10 - the GUI just becomes a blank page and the VM doesn't start...

Anybody have any ideas?

 

[JoeB]

Using a single VM with Freenas 9.10 stable, it's working for me just fine.

 

[Dieter Toews]

**********edit*********************
mysteriously, after a couple of hours, the GUI came back.... I'll try to see if there are logs... makes no sense.
**********************************

Hey, I just followed this guide. I'm getting an error that is a little different than others here - My VMs start fine after a reboot but the PHPvitualbox GUI won't load.

i'm on FreeNAS-9.10.1-U4 (ec9a7d3)

The Jail for virtualbox is pingable.

It seems like it is trying to load but not getting all the way:

my rc file looks like this:

Code:

apache22_enable="YES"
sshd_enable="YES"
vboxwebsrv_user="vbox"
vboxwebsrv_enable="YES"
inet6_enable="YES"
ip6addrctl_enable="YES"

# this is required for networking (replaces loading remaining modules manually)
vboxnet_enable="YES"

# start VirtualBox
vboxheadless_enable="YES"

# VMs to start (whitespace-separated list):
vboxheadless_machines="vm1 vm2"

# definition for VM with acronym "vm1":
vboxheadless_vm1_name="vm1"
vboxheadless_vm1_user="vbox"
vboxheadless_vm1_stop="savestate"

# definition for VM with acronym "vm2":
vboxheadless_vm2_name="vm2"
vboxheadless_vm2_user="vbox"
vboxheadless_vm2_stop="savestate"

i'm not seeing this error on places like:
https://sourceforge.net/p/phpvirtualbox/wiki/Common phpVirtualBox Errors and Issues/