Please,Please,Please vdi-clone-tool inGUI-or-external!

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eFloh
Posts: 45
Joined: 18. Jan 2009, 17:42
Primary OS: MS Windows Vista
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Debian Linux, LiveCd-Tests

Re: Please,Please,Please vdi-clone-tool inGUI-or-external!

Post by eFloh »

ok, I see.
My CloneVDIGUI tool can only call vboxmanage.exe to create a copy of a virtual disk. A whole machine cannot be copied, because vboxmanage.exe does not support this. Thats what you have done. The option to register the cloned disk was used, so the new disk is now available in the virtualbox GUI to be used with any machine of your choice. What's missing now is a copy of the machine that uses the original virtual disk you cloned.
I think the quickest and unserstandable way to create a machine copy is to note the settings of the existing machine (using the "change machine settings" dialog).
After that, create a new virtual machine and select the cloned hard disk in the "choose hard disk" step of the virtual machine wizard.
Now, you have to edit the new machine to fit the settings according to the original values noted above.
afterwards, you have two machines with identical settings except the machine name, network interface mac adresses and the virtual hard disk used.

What I meant with "copy and fix" is that you copy the machine folder of the existing machine nad change the name and various other values in the machine xml file (among others, you have to change the machine guid, the hard disk used, the network mac adresses, etc.) You see, this is not really a fun way to go.

The third method to create a copy of a machine is using the export and import functions in the virtualbox gui. When you export a machine, you get an OVF-File describing the machine and a clone of the hard disk. This OVF export can afterwards be re-imported into virtualbox. Tada - a cloned machine. BUT! The OVF format does not support all settings of virtualbox, so you may have to check if everything is fine. see the manual for the unsupported features when exporting to OVF...

I think, the third method is the most user friendly, whereas the first method describe ensures that you really get the settings right. Editing the XML files by hand is not recommended at all!

Hope I made it clear now?
Florian
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