Autostarting the BVM

[P4ndem1c]

Hey! I'm pretty new to Raspberry Pi and Linux in general. I've been working on a project and stumbled upon this project. I'm trying to setup BVM so that it starts as soon as the Raspberry Pi starts (this is for failover in case power goes down). I'm trying to run a network scanner in the Win11 that will continuously monitor the network.

Tried to use Autostart, but can't figure out what command (or commands) I need to set for it to successfully start the VM. I've tried to also split both bvm boot-nodisplay ~/win11 and bvm connect-reminna ~/win11 as separate start-up options but neither works or at least I don't get visual response of terminal opening up or KVM starting. Any help appreciated!

[Botspot]

First for simplicity you may want to use the simple direct boot mode. I don't think boot-nodisplay and connect will provide any benefit to you in this case.
If you ever do need to run multiple commands in sequence, that's where a bash script comes into play. Put the commands into a .sh file, test it by running it, then put that filename into autostart.

But in your case I don't think an autostarted shell script is necessary. I think you can just make an autostart entry with something like /home/pi/bvm/bvm boot /home/pi/win11
Notice I used full paths here. This is because autostart is not a shell, it directly executes a command. In a shell, things like ~/ and ./ will be expanded to the full paths of your home directory and the present working directory, respectively, but to get this in autostart you would need to wrap everything in bash, which is useful often enough that I added a suggestion for that in AutoStar for running multiple commands in sequence.
But in your case I don't think wrapping the autostart entry inside bash is needed. Just make sure to use the correct full paths for both the bvm command and the path to your VM, and it should work.

[P4ndem1c]

Thanks for your reply, I think I get it. The only problem I got is I can't find the BVM folder where BVM boot is located. I though it's under the same Win11 folder but that doesn't look to be the case. Sorry for dumb questions, still can't understand how Linux is sorting folders.

[Botspot]

I don't completely understand what you mean by "the BVM folder where BVM boot is located". There are 2 folders we are dealing with, one is the VM location which is named win11 and placed in your home folder by default, and the other is bvm, and either placed in your home folder or ~/.local/share, depending on if you installed BVM from pi-apps or if you installed it directly.

[P4ndem1c]

Hey Botspot,

Sorry for getting back late! I think I understood. I've setup an autostart using the following command: "/.local/share/bvm/bvm Boot /home/pi/win11" I also tried: "/.local/share/bvm/ Boot /home/pi/win11" but this doesn't seem to work (at least not autostarting after reboot). I installed the BVM using Pi-Apps store. I've also tried full directory location instead of ~/.local but that didn't work either. Anything I can do to troubleshoot this ?

[Botspot]

/.local/share is also not full path. Without the ~, that would translate to a top-level folder named local next to /boot or /etc in your root filesystem, which obviously does not exist. Try /home/pi/.local/share/bvm/bvm boot /home/pi/win11 (boot should not be capitalized)

Pro tip: if you are ever unsure what the full paths to a file is, just find it in the normal Pi OS file manager, right-click it, and click "copy paths".

[y-nought]

I'd had the autostart working from /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart just fine. I'd messed around enough that I wanted to start fresh, so reimaged the SD card and reinstalled BVM. Now, for whatever reason, that autostart won't do anything, I had to finally create a systemd service to get it working. Yeah, add my voice to the "Anyone who says LLMs are useless is wrong" chorus.

[P4ndem1c]

I got it! I apologise for the delay. Like I said, I'm not the wisest when it comes to Linux or Pies yet. Issue was with the /home/pi, I took "pi" as the location I need to place like for like, not realising that this should be the name of my Pi name. I've replaced that and used your specified location and worked right away!

[P4ndem1c]

Is there a way to make autostart use Remmina or FreeRDP instead of QEMU?