Re: [HTCondor-users] VirtualBox: Guest user vs. Condor account!?!

["David J. Herzfeld" <herzfeldd@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rob:

On Mon, 2012-11-19 at 18:01 -0800, Rob wrote:
> The procedure to follow should be:
> 
> 1. create a new virtual machine environment
> 2. attach the virtual disk (from the Condor file transfer) to the new virtual machine
> 3. start the virtual machine.
> 
> VBoxHeadless.exe cannot do steps 1 and 2, but that must be done with VBoxManage.exe.
> This is also suggested on the VirtualBox website:
> 
> http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#idp13097712
> 
> 
> Hence: first use VBoxManage.exe to set everything up for the new VM,
> and then use VBoxHeadless.exe to start the VM
> (the options with VBoxHeadless.exe are limited to already created VMs).

It's been awhile since I used VirtualBox on Windows (and certainly
longer since I installed Condor on a Windows machine) - so take this
advice with a grain of salt. 

Based on my experience with Pools of VirtualBoxes, I don't believe that
you will need to allow the Condor service to interact with the desktop.
We are able to start virtual machines in Vista/7 without a login
session.

Note, however, that just about all VirtualBox commands require access to
the standard settings folder (on Windows this is in %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH
%), which is used to store the configuration of your created machines.
If the settings folder does not exist, then it will attempt to create
one. It may be the case that %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% is unavailable on the
Condor account (or you are incapable of writing to that directory). 

VirtualBox allows you to explicitly define the folder you wish to use
via the VBOX_USER_HOME environment variable. It may be worth adding
something like set VBOX_USER_HOME=%CD% to the start of your batch file.

Cheers,
David