The vboxweb-service is required for connecting to a VBox Host from phpVirtualBox. On Debian Stretch, the service is installed and started whenever VBox is started (i.e. boot or after an upgrade) however it immediately exits if its configuration file is not present.
The configuration file is not created by default. You need to create it:
/etc/default/virtualbox
At a minimum, the file must contain two lines:
VBOXWEB_USER=vboxuser VBOXWEB_HOST=127.0.0.1
Or if your phpVirtualBox web server and vboxwebsrv are NOT on the same host:
VBOXWEB_USER=vboxuser VBOXWEB_HOST=192.168.1.207
Once the config file is created, you can start the service as root:
sudo service vboxweb-service restart
Verify the service is actively running:
sudo service vboxweb-service status
Additional config options:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| VBOXWEB_USER | The user as which vboxwebsrv will run. |
| VBOXWEB_HOST | The host to bind to (localhost). |
| VBOXWEB_PORT | The port to bind to (18083). |
| VBOXWEB_TIMEOUT | Session timeout in seconds; 0 = disable timeouts (300). |
| VBOXWEB_CHECK_INTERVAL | Frequency of timeout checks in seconds (5). |
| VBOXWEB_THREADS | Maximum number of worker threads to run in parallel (100). |
| VBOXWEB_KEEPALIVE | Maximum number of requests before a socket will be closed (100). |
| VBOXWEB_LOGFILE | Name of file to write log to (no file). |
| INSTALL_DIR | The location of the vboxwebsrv binary (/usr/lib/virtualbox). |
For additional information, see the phpVirtualBox Github site