ISO File not showing up

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Becca
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ISO File not showing up

Post by Becca »

When I go into settings of the New Virtual Machine and try to add a bootable ISO file and navigate to where the ISO file is I cannot see the ISO file even though I JUST updated virtual box. Even ISO files I have used before. And if the ISO file does show up I get an error similar to this one:

Code: Select all

 Failed to open the CD/DVD image /home/jesse/Documents/Microsoft Windows Distribution ISO Archive/Microsoft.Windows.XP.Professional.ISO.
Could not get the storage format of the medium '/home/jesse/Documents/Microsoft Windows Distribution ISO Archive/Microsoft.Windows.XP.Professional.ISO' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).
Result Code: VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Component: Medium
Interface: IMedium {53f9cc0c-e0fd-40a5-a404-a7a5272082cd}
Callee: IVirtualBox {c28be65f-1a8f-43b4-81f1-eb60cb516e66}
Please let me know what is happening. Thank you!
mpack
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by mpack »

What is the host? ISO files not showing up in the file browser means that they are not ISO files (do not have the ISO extension). On Windows hosts this could be because you have the real extension hidden, and the file is actually something else, e.g. filename.ISO.exe.

If you try to open an apparant ISO file and get VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED then again it is not an ISO. If you don't believe it then try an MD5 checksum test on it. Note that file sizes of ISOs must also be divisible by 512.
michaln
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by michaln »

mpack wrote:Note that file sizes of ISOs must also be divisible by 512.
2048 for ISOs (512 for floppy images)
mpack
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by mpack »

Yes, I'm aware that the ISO 9660 standard sector size is 2048 bytes. However unless things have changed the actual granularity checked by VBox is 512 bytes, for all media images including ISOs.
michaln
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by michaln »

You are right. The size for ISO images is supposed to be a multiple of 2048, but something is clearly buggy and this isn't enforced. Thanks for pointing that out!
mpack
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by mpack »

I think this "bug" is so long established that it would be counter-productive to fix it now. Many ISO-build tools don't enforce 2048 byte granularity on creation (in fact a couple of years ago it seemed that they rarely even enforced 512 byte granularity, hence my awareness of VBox semantics). A bugfix now will not improve VirtualBox performance, but it will bring a rash of complaints from people using slightly non-compliant ISO creation tools.

In any case it's debatable that this was ever a bug, I would have done the same on purpose. I think that a good design principle is: creation tools should aim for strict compliance. Consuming tools should aim to accept all compliant objects, plus any non-compliant objects where that can be done harmlessly.
michaln
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by michaln »

But that's the thing -- it can't be done harmlessly. Since the sector size is 2048 bytes on the device side (it's not possible to read less), what do you do if there is less than that much in the last bit of the image? Chop it off entirely and pretend it's not there? Supply the runt data and fill the rest with zeros? Or fill the rest with something else? Neither is guaranteed to be "correct" in all cases.
Becca
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by Becca »

I KNOW that some of the ISO files are ISO files because I have used them previously to install an operating system on VirtualBox machine. And they DO NOT show up when I try to add them to the disk drive. HOWEVER some of them DO work when I start up a new virtual machine. WHY do they not show up when I try to apply the ISO file directly in the settings section of the VirtualMachine
michaln
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by michaln »

Becca: So taking the error message you pasted as a starting point... if you run "ls -l '/home/jesse/Documents/Microsoft Windows Distribution ISO Archive/Microsoft.Windows.XP.Professional.ISO'", what do you get? Does the file exist? Does it have a reasonable size? Do you have permissions to access it?
scottgus1
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by scottgus1 »

To chime in:
Becca: It is possible that a file that did work once can get corrupted later.

For the green guys: Is the Boot-from-ISO requirements in Virtualbox different from the Mount-in-a-guest requirements? if not, then a guest which can accept and mount an ISO ought to be able to boot from it.

Back to Becca: As a test, try downloading some ISO or other from a worthy site, especially if you can get a md5 or SHA hash on the site, too, then run a hash on your download to confirm. Try to start a guest with the new ISO (I find that booting with a non-bootable ISO merely gives the No Bootable Medium error, Virtualbox seems to attempt to use the ISO.) If the guest at least gets to the No Bootable Medium error, than your Virtualbox should be able to boot from ISOs and your other ISO's may be bad.

Also, on one of your non-working XYZ.iso's give some data like this...
I put XYZ.iso in a new guest's CD drive in Virtualbox's settings window, then I boot the guest, and this happens:
I put the same XYZ.iso in a working guest's CD drive in Virtualbox's settings window while the guest is shut down, then I boot the guest, and this happens:
I boot a working guest and mount the same XYZ.iso in the CD drive while the guest is running, and this happens:
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by socratis »

scottgus1 wrote:Is the Boot-from-ISO requirements in Virtualbox different from the Mount-in-a-guest requirements?
I believe that you answered your own question a second later:
scottgus1 wrote:I find that booting with a non-bootable ISO merely gives the No Bootable Medium error, Virtualbox seems to attempt to use the ISO.
I can think of plenty of cases where there are valid data-ISOs, including the really confusing WinXP-SP3's that, as you know, has been the source of confusion for many people trying to install XP merely with a service pack image. Having a mountable ISO is different from having a bootable ISO.

@Becca: Is the '/home/jesse/Documents/Microsoft Windows Distribution ISO Archive/' local or a networked one? Like an NFS share or some other type of share?
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mpack
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by mpack »

An ISO is just an image of a data CD. Any data CD. As such the ISO can contain anything a CD might contain (i.e. it doesn't need to contain an installer of any kind), and may be bootable or not.
mpack
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by mpack »

michaln wrote:Or fill the rest with something else? Neither is guaranteed to be "correct" in all cases.
I'd say: continue doing whatever you're doing now. It seems to have worked for a long time with nobody noticing a downside!
mpack
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by mpack »

Becca wrote:I KNOW that some of the ISO files are ISO files
As I said, run an MD5 checksum test.
d1ce
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Re: ISO File not showing up

Post by d1ce »

Came across this thread a few years later. In case anyone is curious, I solved the problem by shortening the file name. Sometimes windows iso's have very long names and virtualbox didn't like that. I shortened the iso file name to test.iso and it was happy. Example, "mv yourlongisoname.iso test.iso"
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