freedev / macosx-vbox-headless

A MAC OS X configuration helpful to start and stop a virtual box headless machine.

macosx-vbox-headless

Running/Stopping headless VMs during boot/shutdown under Mac OS X, AKA A MAC OS X configuration helpful to start and stop headless VMs.

## Install

You should customize the following placeholders inside the file virtualbox.machine.plist:

• VM.VIRTUALBOX.NAME : This required key uniquely identifies the job. If you don't have multiple vbox you can leave it as is.
• PATH_TO : the path where the vbox.sh script is stored.
• 12345678-1234-abcd-abcd-0123456789ab : This is the virtual machine unique id.
• WORKING_DIRECTORY_PATH : the path where the logs are stored. If you don't care about it, use: /tmp
• USERNAME : This is your username.

Then copy the file virtualbox.machine.plist into /Library/LaunchDaemons/

sudo cp virtualbox.machine.plist  /Library/LaunchDaemons/

When you want start the virtual machine type the following command:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/virtualbox.machine.plist

If you want stop the VM (and the you should type the following command:

sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/virtualbox.machine.plist

The VM will be started machine everytime MAC OS X boots. Set into virtualbox.machine.plist the field RunAtLoad to false if you don't want that the VM starts automatically every time your mac os x boots. When RunAtLoad is set to false, after the load you must start and stop the VM using the following command:

sudo launchctl start VM.VIRTUALBOX.NAME
sudo launchctl stop VM.VIRTUALBOX.NAME