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Re: [LUG] Gentoo systemd Virtualbox Guest Additions Unit File [RESOLVED]

 

On 03/12/13 23:28, bad apple wrote:
> This is driving me mad, and the mighty Google doesn't have a clear
> answer for once: just a lot of conflicting advice from random blogs and
> Linux wikis, all of which contradict each other. I've tried a few hacky
> things already and can actually work around the problem anyway but for
> future reference, I'd like to do this properly.


Right, whilst I'm fixing things I thought I'd get on top of this as
well: it still hasn't fixed the underlying problem, which is now out of
my hands (Gentoo ~Testing has such a new version of Xorg that I can no
longer build the VirtualBox X drivers against it), but I did fix the
systemd issue and did it 'properly', the systemd way.

So, create the file for the systemd unit:

sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/vboxservice.service

Populate it with this:

[Unit]
Description=VirtualBox Guest Services

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/VBoxClient-all

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target


And control it with these:

sudo systemctl start vboxservice.service
sudo systemctl status vboxservice.service
sudo journalctl _SYSTEMD_UNIT=vboxservice.service

I figured this out mostly from examining a couple of functional Fedora
VMs with working VBox guest additions and systemd, and cribbing from
them. I'm still a bit surprised it didn't work out of the box with
Gentoo, the devs are so attentive to detail it's unusual for me to have
fix things manually.

To be fair, writing a basic systemd unit was actually a doddle in the
end compared to writing sysv type init scripts, but debugging this
systemctl/journalctl business is a mess. I absolutely loathe
journalctl's write-only, binary logfile format which is just begged to
corrupt itself and make my life as an admin much, much harder.

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