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<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="autostart-linux">
  <title>Linux: Starting the Autostart Service With init</title>
  
  <body>
    <p>On Linux, the autostart service is activated by setting two variables in
                <filepath>/etc/default/virtualbox</filepath>. The first one is <codeph>VBOXAUTOSTART_DB</codeph> which
            contains an absolute path to the autostart database directory. The directory should have write access for
            every user who should be able to start virtual machines automatically. Furthermore the directory should have
            the sticky bit set. The second variable is <codeph>VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG</codeph> which points the service to
            the autostart configuration file which is used during boot to determine whether to allow individual users to
            start a VM automatically and configure startup delays. The configuration file can be placed in
                <filepath>/etc/vbox</filepath> and contains several options. One is <codeph>default_policy</codeph>
            which controls whether the autostart service allows or denies to start a VM for users which are not in the
            exception list. The exception list starts with <codeph>exception_list</codeph> and contains a comma
            separated list with usernames. Furthermore a separate startup delay can be configured for every user to
            avoid overloading the host. A sample configuration is given below: </p>
    <pre xml:space="preserve"># Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
default_policy = deny

# Bob is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them
# will be delayed for 10 seconds
bob = {
    allow = true
    startup_delay = 10
}

# Alice is not allowed to start virtual machines, useful to exclude certain users
# if the default policy is set to allow.
alice = {
    allow = false
}
</pre>
    <p>Any user who wants to enable autostart for individual machines must set the path to the autostart database
            directory with the following command: </p>
    <pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage setproperty autostartdbpath <varname>autostart-directory</varname>
                  </pre>
  </body>
  
</topic>
