Discuss: Mount any VBox-compatible disk image on the host

[vbmiker]

Hello,
your tool is very interesting and useful - thanks a lot!
My Question:
Has someone succesfully mounted an exported image?
To get all the data from my vm (even snapshots), i exported it and tried to mount the resulting vmdk-file with vdfuse-v50, but i got the error:
Invalid MBR found on image with signature 0xC033

Thanks

[h2o]

vdfuse version 60 is released! Quite a few bugs in the original release are fixed.

[h2o]

Hello,
your tool is very interesting and useful - thanks a lot!
My Question:
Has someone succesfully mounted an exported image?
To get all the data from my vm (even snapshots), i exported it and tried to mount the resulting vmdk-file with vdfuse-v50, but i got the error:
Invalid MBR found on image with signature 0xC033

Thanks

Unfortunately, I don't think vdfuse can deal with snapshots. This may be added in a future release, but I can't be certain. Any help or details are appreicated!

[penteki]

well, if you do not have virtualbox-ose, the script says INSTALL_DIR is required. this should be extended to read as "Do you have virtualbox-ose installed? if yes, set INSTALL_DIR" or sometnig like that. Also, there are points in the compile script where clearly error is encountered, however the install script doesn't get terminated.

[vbmiker]

Unfortunately, I don't think vdfuse can deal with snapshots. This may be added in a future release, but I can't be certain. Any help or details are appreicated!

I don't think, that the snapshots cause the problem. After the export of the vm the disk with all snapshots are merged into one vmdk-file. Maybe the compression of this file is the trouble. I managed it by converting the vmdk with

Code: Select all   Expand viewCollapse view

VBoxManage clonehd <exported vmdk-file> <outputfile> --format VDI

The mount of the resulting vdi-file worked without any problems (with vdfuse-v60).
But this solution is very time-consuming...

[h2o]

Code: Select all   Expand viewCollapse view

VBoxManage clonehd <exported vmdk-file> <outputfile> --format VDI

vdfuse uses the disk library from virtualbox, and I guess it will work at some later point after upgrading virtualbox when the bug is fixed.

[VbRider]

Thank you very much h20 !!! It works greatly
My system:
Archlinux host with latest updates as per today
A couple of .vdi files mounted in /tmp/vdmnt1(and 2) and linked the Partition1 (the only one inside) on another directory by loop device
I'd suggest if the partitions would be seen as blocks by the kernel (if possible), like when we plug a pendrive on USB port

F

[h2o]

I'd suggest if the partitions would be seen as blocks by the kernel (if possible), like when we plug a pendrive on USB port

That would be great, but unfortunately, fuse has no control over block devices since it operates under the filesystem (vfs) layer that fuse operates on.

[nawijn]

Hello,

Today I build and installed vdfuse. No problems here. Mounting a FAT32 VDI disk also not a problem. However when I start copying files from either the host or the guest to this disk, changes are not reflected on both systems. To be honest, I am completely new to fuse and do not know what to expect.

System configuration:
host: Linux Fedora 11, Virtualbox 3.0.10
guest: Windows XP Professional, SP2

I have 2 questions:
- Should it essentially be possible to have read and write access to a FAT32 VDI disk from both the guest and the host?
- If so, does anybody have a hint on what I could do to check where things go wrong in my setup?

Mount information:
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/nawijn/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=nawijn)
/virt/Storage/fat32-storage-1.vdi on /mnt/vdi/pluto-storage-1 type fuse.vdfuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other)
/dev/loop0 on /mnt/pluto type vfat (rw)


Thanks and kind regards,

Marco

[TerryE]

@nawijn, reading your post it seems to me that you are attempting to use a VDI mounted this way for concurrent access by both the VM and the Host. This will not work. If you want file sharing between the host and guest then you must use a network based fileshare such as NTFS shares, samba, SFTP, ...

[nawijn]

Thank you for the reply. I already expected that it would not work like this.

Kind regards,

Marco

[ppr-kut]

Would it be possible to put the vdfuse code somewhere on a shared hosting platform? Something like gitorious or github would already suffice.
I would like to provide a way for Slackware users to install this tool, but that unfortunately requires a direct download location. The forum link works, but wget doesn't support the content-disposition header, which leaves it as "file.php?something" on disk.

[Hubbitus]

Sorry for the offtop, but wget support it with --content-disposition option.

[ppr-kut]

well, yes and no. I tried that before posting my request here and it does not work for me. I still get a random file name.

[TerryE]

Sorry but its on the forum using standard phpBB attachment functionality. It on a FLOSS licence so why not just copy it onto a slackware repository yourself.