Cannot start up the Virtualbox web service for PHPVirtualbox

Question

I am trying to use PHPVirtualbox, but no luck.
Running:
vboxwebsrv -b --logfile path to log file --pidfile /run/vbox/vboxwebsrv.pid --host 127.0.0.1
Ends in:
vboxwebsrv: error: failed to daemonize, rc=VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND. exiting.
Running:
sudo systemctl start vboxweb_mod.service
(Following the wiki,  vboxweb_mod.service is a custom service) Ends in:
Job for vboxweb_mod.service failed. See 'systemctl status vboxweb_mod.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.
Upon further examination...
sudo systemctl status vboxweb_mod.service -l
● vboxweb_mod.service - VirtualBox Web Service
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/vboxweb_mod.service; enabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2014-10-03 20:02:32 EDT; 2min 44s ago
Process: 7392 ExecStart=/usr/bin/vboxwebsrv --pidfile /run/vboxweb.pid --background (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 vboxwebsrv[7392]: 00:00:00.000239 main DMI Product Name: ...
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 vboxwebsrv[7392]: 00:00:00.000254 main DMI Product Version: ...
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 vboxwebsrv[7392]: 00:00:00.000356 main Host RAM: ...
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 vboxwebsrv[7392]: 00:00:00.000363 main Executable: /opt/VirtualBox/vboxwebsrv
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 vboxwebsrv[7392]: 00:00:00.000365 main Process ID: 7392
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 vboxwebsrv[7392]: 00:00:00.000368 main Package type: LINUX_32BITS_GENERIC
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 vboxwebsrv[7392]: vboxwebsrv: error: could not get base directory for logging: VERR_ACCESS_DENIED
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 systemd[1]: vboxweb_mod.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 systemd[1]: Failed to start VirtualBox Web Service.
Oct 03 20:02:32 webhtml-1 systemd[1]: Unit vboxweb_mod.service entered failed state.
Here is the edited vboxweb_mod.service code: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ph … figuration
I'm stuck. I'm frustrated (mainly because I've used PHPVirtualbox on my Ubuntu server before migrating to Arch). I've followed everything on the wiki step by step, substituting "vbox" for my own username, of course. I've added myself to the vboxusers group. Any suggestions/ideas?

Answer 1

I ran into the same problem when I tried setting up VirtualBox and PhpVirtualBox a couple months ago. I was playing around with it again tonight and I finally figured it out! The problem, at least in my case, was that the vbox user directory at /var/lib/vbox hadn't been created yet. I was able to start the vboxweb_mod service after creating the user directory with:
sudo mkdir /var/lib/vbox
and setting the permissions with:
sudo chown vbox:vbox /var/lib/vbox
I also had issues logging in after the service was started. I verified the vbox username and password matched in config.php but, in the end, the cause of the login issue was not having given the vbox user shell access when I created the account; this was resolved by running: 
sudo chsh -s /bin/bash vbox
I hope you have a similar issue and are able to find some of the information in this post helpful. Good luck!
Last edited by jstevens (2015-04-13 05:11:10)