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virtualbox clone, revision/snapshot history

Posted: 18. Sep 2017, 18:47
by davids_dad
I am using virtual box and have various snapshots. Sometimes I use one snapshot, sometimes another. Sometimes I wish to use two at a time.

I wish to clone the entire machine, all snapshots, For the clone to be linked: to save disk space, and so that new snapshots in one appear in the other. The only difference between the clones should be that they have an independent current state.

What I have tried

Clicked clone → clicked expert mode → Clicked linked close → snapshots.Everything becomes greyed out.

Proposal
All states except the current state are imitable. Therefore it should be possible to clone the machine with linked snapshot history. I suspect that creating a clone with all snapshot history, would not be too hard. But keeping them in sync would require a little work. If the config file had an include directive, so that the config could be split across multiple files. Then I suspect that a solution could be found, where the clone shares some of the config (the snapshot history). Then something to stop it braking when both update the snapshot history (concurrency protection). To do this the UI could show one view of the history with two (or more) heads (current states). Each head (current state), would represent a clone.

Does this already exist (maybe in a different manager)?