VBox as a service in Lucid

[CharlesA]

*pokes thread*

I was thinking.. maybe try using the full path to logger and see what happens. If it works when run as your normal user, but not on shutdown, perhaps the path is not found.

[doas777]

sure, i'll give it a try. I found the logger executable, but there has to be a way to get direct access to the log. since a touch works, a file write should as well.

[CharlesA]

touch is an internal command, isn't it?

[doas777]

indeed it is, as is >> or so it would appear. I was able to manually write to the syslog file on shutdown, so looks like that will work. I need to clean it up a little to better integrate the logging, as well as get it to echo to stdout, but here is my working copy.

a quick question on savestate. I did some poking around and it seems like there is no cli way to gracefully shutdown the guest. do virtual filesystems suffer from the write-in-progress danger that physical disks carry with them? is it safe to simply reset them?

I'm also having a problem with network services in the guest when resuming from saved state. I think I can handle that though.

#!/bin/bash

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:       vmboot
# Required-Start: vboxdrv $local_fs $syslog
# Required-Stop:  vboxdrv $local_fs $syslog
# Default-Start:  2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:   0 1 6
# Short-Description: Stop/Start VMs before/after System shutdown
### END INIT INFO

# Add this script to /etc/init.d/
# Run update-rc.d vmboot defaults as root

# Written to work with VirtualBox 4.x

# User who is running the VMs
VBOXUSER=CONFIGURE_ME
SU="sudo -H -u $VBOXUSER"

#en/disable syslogging 1|0
EnableLogging="1"
echocmd="echo -e"
loggercmd="logger -s -f /var/log/syslog"
logdate=$(echo -e $(date +"%b %d %H:%M:%S"))
loggermsg="$(echo -e $logdate `hostname` vmboot: %s)\n"

# Path to VBoxManage
VBOXMANAGE="/usr/bin/VBoxManage --nologo"

# Get UUID of All Running VMs
# UUID looks like this: a02b5b54-a84d-48fa-8dac-2a3fad55717e
RUNNINGVMS=$($SU $VBOXMANAGE list runningvms | sed -e 's/^".*".*{\(.*\)}/\1/')
# Get UUID of All VMs
ALLVMS=$($SU $VBOXMANAGE list vms | sed -e 's/^".*".*{\(.*\)}/\1/')

#set logging
if [[ "$EnableLogging" -eq "1" ]]; then
    echocmd=$loggercmd
fi

# Check to insure $ALLVMS is not null and exit if it is.
if [[ $ALLVMS = "" ]]; then
        $echocmd  "No VMs are detected on this host! Did you configure the VBOXUSER variable?"; exit
fi

function logMsg(){
    if [[ "$EnableLogging" -eq "1" ]]; then
        printf "$loggermsg" "$1" >> /var/log/syslog >> /dev/stdout;
    fi
}

function stopService(){
    if [[ -n $RUNNINGVMS ]]; then
        for v in $RUNNINGVMS; do
        $echocmd "Saving state of $($SU $VBOXMANAGE list vms | grep $v | awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}')..." && $SU $VBOXMANAGE controlvm $v savestate
        done; else
        $echocmd "No running VMs to save!"
    fi
    # If the previous loop has an error, the loops exits and returns an error.
    if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then
            $echocmd  "There was an error stopping your VMs!"; else
            echo -e "$(touch /var/log/vmboot-shutdown-`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`)";
            logMsg "VMBoot has saved all VMs";
    fi
    
}

function startService(){
    for v in $ALLVMS; do
        if [[ -n $($SU $VBOXMANAGE showvminfo $v) ]]; then
                $echocmd  "Waiting for VM \"$($SU $VBOXMANAGE list vms | grep $v | awk -F\" '{print $(NF -1)}')\" to power on..." && $SU $VBOXMANAGE startvm $v --type headless 1> /dev/null && logger -s "VM \"$($SU $VBOXMANAGE list vms | grep $v | awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}')\" has been successfully started."; else
                $echocmd  "No Saved VMs to start!"

        fi
        # If the previous loop has an error, the loops exits and returns an error.
        if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then
                $echocmd  "There was an error starting your VMs! Try starting them manually to see what the problem is."; break
        fi
    done
}

function restartService(){
    stopService
    startService
}

function serviceStatus(){
    if [[ -n $RUNNINGVMS ]]; then
        $echocmd "List of Running VMs:" && $SU $VBOXMANAGE list runningvms; else
                $echocmd "No VMs Currently Running!"
    fi
}

case $1 in
stop)
    stopService
;;
start)
    startService
;;
restart)
    restartService
;;
status)
    serviceStatus
;;
force-reload)
    #not really sure what to do here other than restart
    restartService
;;
*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/vmboot start | stop | status | restart | force-reload"; exit 1
;;
esac
exit 0
# eof

[CharlesA]

From what I read, just powering off the guest may cause problems and/or data corruption on the virtual hdd.

I did see that you can send these two signals to the guest via cli:

 acpipowerbutton

I think that might be what you are looking for, tho I have not used it. Just replace savestate with that.

[doas777]

ok, It took a little fiddling, but I got the ACPI button to work. the guest had not installed acpid by default so I had to:

sudo apt-get acpid

but after that, the guest responded correctly to the shutdown request. very nice.

I will be testing the guest network services on startup and shutdown tonight and tomorrow (server reboots are a little bit of a pain during the day). if all goes well, I'll clean up the script and pass it back if you are interested. I'm a .net/java programmer by trade, so I am used to somewhat cleaner code that shell usually provides. I am always struck by how insanely flexible, yet bizarrely arcane shell is.

after that, all I need to look at running transmission as a service (on the host) and I am golden.

[CharlesA]

Glad you got it figured out. Good luck with getting the network issues resolves and transmission to run as a service.

I'd love a copy of the script once you get it up and running.

[doas777]

I think I have everything running to my taste now, so here you go. I hope its of use.
New\Notable:
documentation expanded
added a spin-wait to let the vms actually shutdown before exit
new behavoir for force-reload. attempts to gracefully stop, and resets guest if it cannot.

Thanks again, and have fun,
Franklin

[CharlesA]

Looks good. Nice job!

[pildrmar]

Thank you guys! Those scripts helped me out bigtime! You have done a great job here