Need to move a virtual machine, only to find that copying and pasting doesn’t work? Perhaps you just want to know what to backup? Take a look at this quick guide on the process to get a better understanding of VirtualBox
First things first: be sure that your virtual machine is shut down and powered off. Next, make sure you get rid of any snapshots you have. There isn’t a fool-proof and safe way to do this without getting rid of them, unfortunately. Select your virtual machine and click on the “Snapshots” tab.
Select your snapshot and click the delete button. Be prepared to wait a while as VirtualBox merges differences with your machine’s current state. The machine’s state won’t actually change, though, so don’t worry. Now that the prep stuff is out of the way, we can start the moving process.
Once that’s done, go to File > Virtual Media Manager. You’ll see a list of media that you’ve used or have attached to your machines.
Select which virtual machine you want to move, then click on the “Release” icon above. In my case, I’ll be moving W7.vdi from my home directory to another hard drive.
Once you have it released, close VirtualBox go to its default settings directory, /home/user/.VirtualBox/
You can copy your .vdi file from inside the HardDisks directory if you want to just back it up, or you can move it. Be patient, as this can take a while depending on your configuration.
Meanwhile, let’s edit the VirtualBox.xml file to our liking. This is the step most people don’t really know much about, but it’s pretty vital in making sure things work smoothly. Open it up in gedit.
Scroll down a bit and you’ll get to the parts we need to edit.
If you’re changing the location of your virtual machines, find the xml tags for “MachineEntry” and change the source path. If you’re changing the location of your virtual disk images, find the xml tags for “HardDisk” and change the location there. As you can see, each machine is tied to a disk image by its UUID, which should not be changed. If you’re moving virtual machines to a new computer, be sure to copy these this file over and replace the previous configuration file.
In my particular case, I just wanted to move the disk image to a more spacious drive, so I left the other things intact.
If you’re changing hosts between Windows and Linux, be sure to change the version declaration at the top of the file to say “windows” instead of “linux” as well.
Once you’ve moved the .vdi file, fire up VirtualBox and go to File > Virtual Media Manager.
Click on the old .vdi file and click remove. Now, click “Add,” navigate to its new location, and click “Open.” Click “OK.”
Now that the new .vdi is added to VirtualBox’s list, we have to attach it to your virtual machine. At the main screen select it, go to “Settings,” and click on the “Storage” panel.
Under the appropriate IDE controller, click the “Add Attachment” button. You’ll see a hard disk get added automatically, but it probably won’t be the correct one.
Click it and on right side, under “Hard Disk,” choose the correct .vdi file. Click “OK.”
If you followed all the steps and you edited the VirtualBox.xml correctly you should be able to start up the machine without any problems! There are a few hairy areas, so if things aren’t working, be sure you’re using the correct paths and you’ve edited only the relevant areas of VirtualBox.xml.
The overall process is a bit more intricate than just copying and pasting, but it’s still relatively quick and painless. Share your backup stories about VirtualBox in the comments!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
How To Backup and Move VirtualBox Machines
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Installing Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) on Mac OS X Using VirtualBox posted by Jun Auza
As some of you may know, I've upgraded or should I say tried upgrading my Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) desktop to 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). Sad to say, the result was a disaster. Although the whole installation process was successful, I ended up having an unbootable system. Since I'm not yet in the mood to fix it, I decided to just try Ubuntu 10.10 by installing it on Mac OS X as guest OS using my favorite free virtualization software VirtualBox.
To those of you who would also like to install Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) on Mac OS X via VirtualBox, here is a step-by-step guide (with screenshots) on how to do it:1. Download the latest version of VirtualBox for OS X from HERE, and then install it.2. Run the VirtualBox application and create a new virtual machine.
3. Allocate RAM to your virtual machine. The recommended amount of memory is 512MB but I decided to portion out 1024MB since my total RAM is 4GB.
4. Create a new virtual hard disk for Ubuntu.
5. Select the type of virtual hard disk. I recommend you use dynamically expanding storage for a more flexible disk space.
6. Decide on the size of disk space that will be allotted to your virtual machine.
7. The virtual disk will be created once you click on the "Done" button.
8. Turn on the virtual machine by clicking on the "Start" icon.
9. The first run wizard will appear to help you install the OS, in this case Ubuntu 10.10.
10. Select the media that contains the Ubuntu 10.10 ISO installer.
11. Since the installer was saved on my hard drive, I added it using the virtual media manager.
12. Once you are done, the Ubuntu 10.10 installation process will follow. If you are already familiar with Ubuntu, just install it like you normally would.
For those of you who have not used Ubuntu before, watch out for the Ubuntu 10.10 installation walkthrough on my next post. I will also give a screenshots tour and share with you my first impressions of using Maverick Meerkat.
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