this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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Linux

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Sorry if this kind of question isn't allowed here, but I'm at my wit's end. VB randomly started launching on startup about 2 weeks ago (on EndeavourOS) and I can't figure out why. There's no shortcut in ~/config/autostart, it isn't in the KDE startup apps list, and I can't find anything virtualbox-related with systemctl either. There's also no setting in the VB app itself. WTF?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Your viruses installed themselves a Windows virtual machine to run properly?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

https://www.baeldung.com/linux/virtualbox-vm-start-on-boot

To successfully automate a VirtualBox VM to start at boot time, we must ensure we’re running VirtualBox version 5 and above.

By default, after installing VirtualBox, the vboxautostart-service unit file should exist in the /etc/systemd/system/ directory.

Alternatively, for systems missing the vboxautostart service, we can create a custom systemd unit file that will contain our configurations to run VirtualBox on boot. systemd is a system and service manager for most Linux-based OSes.

Didn't see you mention the autostart-service, and the article is recent enough that maybe it was added as part of an update?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

vboxautostart.service does not exist

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Anything in /etc/systemd/system as vboxautostart?

Anything in /etc/default/ virtualbox file?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

No to both!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Try to exclude it from being restored on KDE startup. There could be something running in the background that keeps getting saved and restored. Go to System Settings, System, Desktop Session, put virtualbox in the ignored applications list. You can also just choose "Start with an empty session" and then relog to see if that stops it from coming back, then you'll know if this is causing your problem or not. Good luck!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I was feeling good about this one, but that didn't work either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Bummer! What's its parent process? Maybe that will hint at something.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what you mean by this, sorry! My Linux expertise is limited once I get below surface level.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Well hey, welcome to the Linux club :)

Unlike Windows, in Linux every process has a parent except for PID (Process ID) 1, which is the init system. You can run a command like ps auxf and you'll get a tree of all your processes and you can hopefully see what spawned VirtualBox.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's not a VB problem. I have the same issue with other programs too in Endeveaour OS. It appears that when you turn off the machine sometime a program get "stuck" and will keep auto starting itself without reason. The first time it happened to me it went away after an update, but now I'm having Firefox and Strawberry starting themselves just because they feel it.

My hypothesis is that if you shutdown the machine without closing a program it gets stuck. How to get rid of it? I still have no idea

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Interesting... Do you also use KDE?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Looks like you need to change the session restore settings in KDE. It's the virtual box GUI that starts up?

https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/plasma-desktop/kcontrol/kcmsmserver/index.html

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

No hablo espanol, but this seems to be telling me how to install virt-manager, which is not what I'm tying to do.