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<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="vboxwatchdog-linux">
  <title>Linux: Starting the Watchdog Service With init</title>
  
  <body>
    <p>On Linux, the watchdog service can be automatically started during host boot by adding appropriate parameters to
      the file <filepath>/etc/default/virtualbox</filepath>. There is one mandatory parameter,
        <codeph>VBOXWATCHDOG_USER</codeph>, which must be set to the user which will later start the VMs. For backward
      compatibility you can also specify <codeph>VBOXBALLOONCTRL_USER</codeph>. </p>
    <p>The parameters in the following table all start with the <codeph>VBOXWATCHDOG_</codeph> prefix string. For
      example: <codeph>VBOXWATCHDOG_BALLOON_INTERVAL</codeph> and <codeph>VBOXWATCHDOG_LOGSIZE</codeph>. Legacy
      parameters such as <codeph>VBOXBALLOONCTRL_INTERVAL</codeph> can still be used. </p>
    <table id="table-vboxwatchdog-config-params">
      <title><ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> Watchdog Configuration Parameters</title>
      <desc><ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> Watchdog Configuration Parameters</desc>
      <tgroup cols="3">       
        <thead>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <b outputclass="bold">Parameter</b>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <b outputclass="bold">Description</b>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <b outputclass="bold">Default</b>
              </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>USER</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  The user which the watchdog service runs as
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p/>
            </entry>
          </row>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>ROTATE</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  Number of log files, 0 disables log rotation
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  10
                </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>LOGSIZE</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  Maximum log file size to trigger rotation, in bytes
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  1MB
                </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>LOGINTERVAL</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  Maximum time interval to trigger log rotation, in
                  seconds
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  1 day
                </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>BALLOON_INTERVAL</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  Interval for checking the balloon size, in
                  milliseconds
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  30000
                </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>BALLOON_INCREMENT</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  Balloon size increment, in megabytes
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  256
                </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>BALLOON_DECREMENT</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  Balloon size decrement, in megabytes
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  128
                </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>BALLOON_LOWERLIMIT</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  Balloon size lower limit, in megabytes
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  64
                </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
          <row>
            <entry>
              <p>
                <codeph>BALLOON_SAFETYMARGIN</codeph>
              </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  Free memory required for decreasing the balloon size,
                  in megabytes
                </p>
            </entry>
            <entry>
              <p>
                  1024
                </p>
            </entry>
          </row>
        </tbody>
      </tgroup>
    </table>
  </body>
  
</topic>
