Auto-start VirtualBox VMs on CentOS host

Question

I installed VirtualBox v2.2.4 on a CentOS 5.2 host. I want the guest VMs to auto-start when the host boots up.

What's the correct solution? Where should I run VBoxHeadless from?

Edit: this question can be generalized to "what should I do to run something after boot in CentOS?".

Also, I'd like to have the output from VBoxHeadless (stdout/err) saved somewhere.

Answer 1

In answer to: 'Edit: this question can be generalized to "what should I do to run something after boot in CentOS?".'

Copy /usr/share/doc/initscripts-[your version]/sysvinitfiles to /etc/init.d/[your startup file]

Edit the file following the directions contained within. Also, look at some of the other init scripts in /etc/init.d

As sysvinitfiles suggests, it's a good idea to 'man chkconfig', but the basics are:

1. Make sure you have something similar to # chkconfig 2345 20 80 in your script
2. $ chmod 755 [your startup file]
3. Run $ chkconfig --add [your startup file]
4. service [your startup file] start|stop

Having # chkconfig 2345 tells linux to start and stop your program at bootup and shutdown respectively

Answer 2

vboxtool could take care of it for you:

Easy control of virtual machines of VirtualBox (virtualization solution) on a Linux headless server. Start, stop, save, backup and show status of sessions in batch mode from command line.

Place vboxtoolinit in /etc/init.d/

chkconfig --add vboxtoolinit
chkconfig --levels 2345 vboxtoolinit on