*.start and *.stop scripts are not created by VBoxManage modifyvm myvm --autostart-enabled on

[Dan Rollo]

I have followed the steps in this tutorial: ​http://www.vionblog.com/virtualbox-4-3-autostart-debian-wheezy/

The problem is no *.start or *.stop files are created in /etc/vbox/ (and no errors are shown) after running the command:

$ VBoxManage modifyvm myvm --autostart-enabled on

In case it helps, trying to disable auto start for the same VM does give an error:

$ VBoxManage modifyvm myvm --autostart-enabled off
VBoxManage: error: Removing machine 'myvm' to the autostart database failed with VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED (0x8000ffff), component SessionMachine, interface IMachine, callee nsISupports
VBoxManage: error: Context: "COMSETTER(AutostartEnabled)(ValueUnion.f)" at line 2616 of file VBoxManageModifyVM.cpp

Host os: Ubuntu Server 12.04-4 (amd64)

VirtualBox: 4.3.8

This issue was reported on the forum a few weeks ago, but there has been no reply: ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=60425&p=282223#p282223

Thanks!

For reference, here's user/group involved:

$ whoami 
dan
$ groups
dan adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare vboxusers

The contents of /etc/vbox

$ ls -al /etc/vbox/
total 12
drwxrwxr-t   2 root vboxusers 4096 Mar 12 00:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 101 root root      4096 Mar 12 02:11 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root root       239 Mar 12 00:55 autostart.conf

content of autostart.conf:

# Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
default_policy = deny

# user dan is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them
# will be delayed for 10 seconds
dan = {
 allow = true
 startup_delay = 10
}

uname:

$ uname -a
Linux ubu-host64 3.11.0-18-generic #32~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Thu Feb 20 17:52:10 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux