The Oracle VM VirtualBox web service, vboxwebsrv, is used for controlling Oracle VM VirtualBox remotely. It is documented in detail in the Oracle VM VirtualBox Software Development Kit (SDK). See Chapter 4, Oracle VM VirtualBox Programming Interfaces. Web service start scripts are available for supported host operating systems. The following sections describe how to use the scripts. The Oracle VM VirtualBox web service is never started automatically as a result of a standard installation.
On Linux, the web service can be automatically started during
host boot by adding appropriate parameters to the file
/etc/default/virtualbox. There is one
mandatory parameter, VBOXWEB_USER, which must
be set to the user which will later start the VMs. The
parameters in the following table all start with the
VBOXWEB_ prefix string. For example:
VBOXWEB_HOST and
VBOXWEB_PORT.
Table 2.2 Web Service Configuration Parameters
Parameter | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| The user which the web service runs as | |
| The host to bind the web service to | localhost |
| The port to bind the web service to | 18083 |
| Server key and certificate file, in PEM format | |
| File name for password to server key | |
| CA certificate file, in PEM format | |
| CA certificate path | |
| DH file name or DH key length in bits | |
| File containing seed for random number generator | |
| Session timeout in seconds, 0 disables timeouts | 300 |
| Frequency of timeout checks in seconds | 5 |
| Maximum number of worker threads to run in parallel | 100 |
| Maximum number of requests before a socket will be closed | 100 |
| Number of log files, 0 disables log rotation | 10 |
| Maximum log file size to trigger rotation, in bytes | 1MB |
| Maximum time interval to trigger log rotation, in seconds | 1 day |
Setting the parameter SSL_KEYFILE enables the
SSL/TLS support. Using encryption is strongly encouraged, as
otherwise everything, including passwords, is transferred in
clear text.
On Oracle Solaris hosts, the Oracle VM VirtualBox web service daemon is integrated into the SMF framework. You can change the parameters, but do not have to if the defaults below already match your needs:
svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/host=localhost svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/port=18083 svccfg -s svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default setprop config/user=root
The table in Section 2.19.1, “Linux: Starting the Web Service With init” showing the
parameter names and defaults also applies for Oracle Solaris.
The parameter names must be changed to lowercase and a prefix of
config/ has to be added. For example:
config/user or
config/ssl_keyfile. If you make any change,
do not forget to run the following command to put the changes
into effect immediately:
svcadm refresh svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default
If you forget the above command then the previous settings are used when enabling the service. Check the current property settings as follows:
svcprop -p config svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default
When everything is configured correctly you can start the Oracle VM VirtualBox web service with the following command:
svcadm enable svc:/application/virtualbox/webservice:default
For more information about SMF, please refer to the Oracle Solaris documentation.
On Mac OS X, launchd is used to start the Oracle VM VirtualBox
webservice. An example configuration file can be found in
$HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist.
It can be enabled by changing the Disabled
key from true to false. To
manually start the service use the following command:
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.virtualbox.vboxwebsrv.plist
For additional information on how launchd services could be configured see: