VBOX_USER_HOME ignored by VBoxManage metrics

[olegme]

Host ubuntu 12.04, kernel 3.2.0-25 x86_64 VirtualBox 4.1.18

All VMs installed by a normal local user, say "olegme". For this user "VBoxManage list vms" and "VBoxManage metrics list *" work as expected, i.e. the first one lists installed VMs, the second one lists counters available for all installed VMs. Counters were setup previously via "VBoxManage metrics setup ..." command run by this user "olegme".

Now, logging in as root (or any other user, different from the VM owner "olegme") I obviously cannot see the above VMs. "VBoxManage list vms" gives an empty list of VMs, which is expected.

If I set an environment variable "VBOX_USER_HOME" for user "root" to point to the ".VirtualBox" directory in the home directory of the VM owner "olegme" I can use "VBoxManage list vms" to see the list of VMs, owned by user "olegme". This is also expected.

If then still being root and having the environment variable "VBOX_USER_HOME" set as above I run "VBoxManage metrics list *", it gives only counters for host, but not for VMs. So I conclude that it just ignores "VBOX_USER_HOME". This is a defect.

Justification: I use metrics for a management tool, which in particular collects statistics about running VMs. Workaround used so far was to use sudo command to rum "VBoxManage metrics ..." on behalf of the user, who owns VMs. This in turn required some other system setting adjusted, which increases security risks and cannot be used in a long run.

Please fix this defect.

[Frank Mehnert]

Only VBoxSVC has to respect this environment variable. If VBoxSVC is still running then it will not see any change which was made in between.