Auto-starting VirtualBox VMs on OS X

After finding a lot of other posts on the topic that didn't work out for me this one did the trick so I'm reposting for my own sense of self preservation.

Link to original article.

Copy the Virtualbox autostart plist template file to your system's LaunchDaemons folder.

sudo cp \
    /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist \
    /Library/LaunchDaemons

Then edit /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist set Disabled to false, and confirm the last string entry in the command array is set to /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg. The file should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Disabled</key>
  <false/>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>org.virtualbox.vboxautostart</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxAutostartDarwin.sh</string>
    <string>/etc/vbox/autostart.cfg</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>LaunchOnlyOnce</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Then edit /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.startup.plist set Disabled to false, set KeepAlive to true. The file should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>             <string>org.virtualbox.startup</string>
    <key>Disabled</key>          <false/>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>         <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>         <true/>
    <key>LaunchOnlyOnce</key>    <true/>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/Library/Application Support/VirtualBox/LaunchDaemons/VirtualBoxStartup.sh</string>
            <string>restart</string>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Make the directory /etc/vbox and create the file /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg with the following content:

default_policy = allow
osxusername = {
allow = true
}

Make sure to change osxusername to the username on your system that the VMs are under.

Next properly set permissions:

sudo chmod +x /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxAutostartDarwin.sh
sudo chown root:wheel /etc/vbox
sudo chown root:wheel /etc/vbox/autostart.cfg
sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist

Now, configure the VMs that should automatically start and set how they should be stopped:

VBoxManage modifyvm vmname --autostart-enabled on
VBoxManage modifyvm vmname --autostop-type acpishutdown

From jgentsch's comment here add a funtion to /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxAutostartDarwin.sh in order to wait until kernel modules are loaded.

... start of skript ommitted ...
function waitForKernelModules()
{
  VBOX_EXT=0
  CHECK_CNT=0

  until [[ $VBOX_EXT -eq 1 || $CHECK_CNT -gt 60 ]]; do
    echo Check for VBox-Kernelmodules - ${CHECK_CNT}

    sleep 1
    VBOX_EXT=1
    CHECK_CNT=$(( ${CHECK_CNT} + 1 ))

    if kextstat -lb org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv 2>&1 | grep -q org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv; then
      echo "Found org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv. Good."
    else
      VBOX_EXT=0
    fi
    if kextstat -lb org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB 2>&1 | grep -q org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB; then
      echo "Found org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB. Good."
    else
      VBOX_EXT=0
    fi
    if kextstat -lb org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt 2>&1 | grep -q org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt; then
      echo "Found org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFLT. Good."
    else
      VBOX_EXT=0
    fi
    if kextstat -lb org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp 2>&1 | grep -q org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp; then
      echo "Found org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxAdp. Good."
    else
      VBOX_EXT=0
    fi
  done
}

CONFIG=${1}
waitForKernelModules
vboxStartStopAllUserVms "start"
trap vboxStopAllUserVms HUP KILL TERM

Finally, test the configuration by running:

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.virtualbox.vboxautostart.plist

After a reboot, the VMs that have been set with autostart enabled should be running!

To check for vms running, without starting a GUI session, connect through ssh as the user that run the vms, and type

ps aux | grep vmname

And you will get something like

username           1201  15.4  2.7  2783284 228952   ??  S     3:28PM   0:07.01 /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxHeadless --comment vmname --startvm XXXXXXX-YYYY-YYYY-YYYY-XXXXXX --vrde config

References

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#autostart-osx

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=51593&start=15#p240724

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=51529#p236492

bistoco/gist:4cb254360d42f9a51c3a

Auto-starting VirtualBox VMs on OS X

References