SOLVED Ubuntu etc. in VirtualBox jail: Automatically start VM along with FreeNAS start?

[TheWoo]

I’ve spent an awful amount of time to install Ubuntu inside a VirtualBox jail, in order to run jBidwatcher (an eBay sniper running on Java). This setup basically works, the problem however now is that if I reboot the FreeNAS (or shut it down and turn it back on at a later point) the Ubuntu VM jail stops (kind of crashes; the VirtualBox UI says "Aborted"), whereas my expectation was that it would return with the previous state or at least automatically reboot.

Question: Does anyone have a solution for this or can anyone tell me how make a Virtual Machine inside the VirtualBox jail to automatically reboot on FreeNAS startup?

 

[TheWoo]

I’ve searched and came across some instructions on how to set up automatic restart on VirtualBox VMs, but unfortunately it doesn’t work. The VM autostart feature is obviously not supported by the VitualBox inside the FreeNAS jail. The jail shell returns on "
VBoxManage modifyvm <uuid|vmname> --autostart-enabled on":

VBoxManage: error: The VM autostart feature is not supported on this platform VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_NOT_SUPPORTED (0x80bb0009), component SessionMachine, interface IMachine, callee nsISupports VBoxManage: error: Context: "COMSETTER(AutostartEnabled)(ValueUnion.f)" at line 2616 of file VBoxManageModifyVM.cpp

 

[TheWoo]

Found two older threads on this topic and the first one already solved my problem. Seems to work flawlessly.

• https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/enabling-autostart-of-virtualbox-vms-on-freenas.26503/
  
• https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/autostart-virtualbox-vm.22116/

 

[cyberjock]

Thanks for finding that. I knew there was a thread out there that worked.