Reimplement "Restore to the last snapshot on power off"

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

@klaus

It is not a bug in the usual sense. There was a discussion with the GUI team on this topic during work on VirtualBox 7, and the feature was considered a problematic feature (there were complaints about data loss by users who didn't realize that they had the checkbox ticked previously - the state of it was remembered as you probably know). Therefore it was removed completely to make the use of VirtualBox more safe.

We know that any such change (no matter what we do) will make someone have to change his workflow. In this case needing to use the "snapshots" tool (or just to mention it: start the GUI from command line with option --restore-current).

Let's not get into arguments about the numbers of users who actually use this feature actively (we don't have such information, and I don't think you have it either).

We don't have exactly the extradata flag you're hinting at. The checkbox has been removed from the codebase. But you can provide the flag which the checkbox handled through extradata: set "GUI/DiscardStateOnPowerOff" to 1 (works for specific VM or globally). Use VBoxManage for that, don't edit the .vbox settings file directly. And keep in mind that whatever you set will be used on every VM poweroff through the GUI dialog (you can remove the extradata key before powering off if necessary).

It's still hugely inconvenient.

Would be great if your GUI team devised a different/safer way/apparoach to keep this feature. Too many people relied on it.

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

Related #21189.

[rickga]

I too would like this feature back as we heavily rely on the feature in our workflow and I'm sure that's the same for many out there.

[Freddy Willemsen]

I second the motion to restore the functionality.

[aeichner]

Duplicate of #21189.