First, you need to start the vm, headless, from the command line. To do this, drop into a terminal and run: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
vboxmanage list vms<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThis should give you a list of VM’s available to your user. In my case, it gave me: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
jon@mycomputerninja:~ $ vboxmanage list vms\n\"your vm name\" {1f134d1e-ba34-432c-b6e4-fc01f1ad250f}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThen, you can run: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
vboxmanage startvm <your vm name here> --type headless<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThen, do: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
ps aux | grep <vmname><\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nTo see what command was actually run. This should show some output like: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
jon@mycomputerninja:\/etc\/systemd\/system $ ps aux| grep Zone\njon 4560 63.9 17.4 3214804 703504 ? Sl 01:18 0:58 \/usr\/lib\/virtualbox\/VBoxHeadless --comment Zoneminder --startvm 1f134d1e-ba34-432c-b6e4-fc01f1ad250f --vrde config<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nNow, armed with the command that was actually run, highlighted above, you can build a systemd init file. An example init file is below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Unit]\nDescription=Zoneminder VM startup\nWantedBy=multi-user.target\n\n[Service]\nType=simple\nExecStart=\/usr\/lib\/virtualbox\/VBoxHeadless --comment Zoneminder --startvm 1f134d1e-ba34-432c-b6e4-fc01f1ad250f --vrde config\nUser=jon\nRestart=always<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nThat file should get dropped into \/etc\/systemd\/system\/ and named something like <myservice>.service. In my case, since I was running a zoneminder service, I named it zoneminderVM.service. You also note I run it as my user, as it won’t work as the root user, because the vm context for root is different. I also run it in the multi-user target in wantedby so that the system is mostly up before this service is attempted to run. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next, you need to run the relevant systemd commands to run this new service. so do the following: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
sudo systemctl daemon-reload\nsudo systemctl start <your service file name>.service \nsudo systemctl status <your service file name>.service <\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nIf all goes well, your VM should start up as a service under your username, and restart any time the machine restarts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First, you need to start the vm, headless, from the command line. To do this, drop into a terminal and run: This should give you a list of VM’s available to your user. In my case, it gave me: Then, you can run: Then, do: To see what command was actually run. This should show some output like: Now, armed with the command that was actually run, highlighted above, you can build a systemd init file. An example init file…<\/p>\n