Hi Guys
I've been playing around with this for a couple of days now and have to say I'm pretty impressed.
I've got a couple of suggestions though and would like to point out a small bug (more a bugget!!).
The bugget (on the Linux host version) is that the clonevdi command will ONLY clone the file in the /root/.virtualbox/VDI directory. So if you have a machine that has it's vdi file elsewhere and another one with it's file in /root/.virtualbox/VDI (let's say the files have the same name but different UUID's) you can end up cloning the wrong one.
On the suggestions front you really have to re-write the manual (and perhaps produce better tools) with regard to snapshots, removing snapshots and merging snapshots. It took me nearly 3 hours to work out how to merge my vdi's and snapshots (in the gui the phrase 'discard a snapshot' infers it's just getting dumped, not that it's getting merged into the master vdi) to produce a 'master clean build' that I could make immutable as the basis for later development environments. Really as this will likely be the 'jumping off point' for a lot of users the ability to get to a 'master clean build' and make it immutable easily would score major brownie points (it's almost worth doing a HOWTO in the manual just for that).
Anyway moan over, as I said I'm pretty impressed and will continue to use the product and tell people about it.
Bugget
I'm running Ubuntu on Sony Vaio notebook hardware, with XP in a VBox.
Pinnocchio do you mean to say that when the GUI says "Discard Snapshot (and/or) current state", that you are in fact rolling the original install up into your finely tuned and tweaked snapshot? Or that you are discarding your tunes and tweaks and going back to a prior version?
What exactly did you find out in your 3 hours work, that is rolls up, or rolls back? I essentially need to "clone" my existing snapshot. I need to do this for 2 reasons: (1) because it is nested 7 deep in a snapshot sequence, and each of the snapshots is using as much disk space as the original install. It has effectively killed my hard drive space; and (2) I want to use my lastest snapshot as the platform for future development, as pointed out in Pinnocchio's post.
Many thanks,
Skibum
Pinnocchio do you mean to say that when the GUI says "Discard Snapshot (and/or) current state", that you are in fact rolling the original install up into your finely tuned and tweaked snapshot? Or that you are discarding your tunes and tweaks and going back to a prior version?
What exactly did you find out in your 3 hours work, that is rolls up, or rolls back? I essentially need to "clone" my existing snapshot. I need to do this for 2 reasons: (1) because it is nested 7 deep in a snapshot sequence, and each of the snapshots is using as much disk space as the original install. It has effectively killed my hard drive space; and (2) I want to use my lastest snapshot as the platform for future development, as pointed out in Pinnocchio's post.
Many thanks,
Skibum
Ref: Cloning your latest snapshot
Answered my own questions Pinnocchio, thanks.
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=4316#4316
skibum
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=4316#4316
skibum