[SOLVED] Backing up, moving, and copying VMs?

[BassKozz]

If I want to backup, move, or copy a VM created in VirtualBox, can I simply backup/move/copy the following files:
/home/user/.VirtualBox/*.vdi (HD files)
/home/user/.VirtualBox/Machine/* (machine folder)

to create a new machine from the existing one?

I am trying to take a base install (WinXP) and branch it out to two new VM's (Work & Play), can I simply copy the "WinXP" folder and vdi file and rename them as new "Work" & "Play" folder/files (respectively) to create 2 new VM's?

Maybe I am over complicating things, is there an easier way to copy a VM into two new VM's?

[BassKozz]

Ok I just tried to give this a go on my own and here's the results:

Code: Select all

$ VBoxManage clonevdi WinXP.vdi WinXP-Work.vdi
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1.5.4
(C) 2005-2007 innotek GmbH
All rights reserved.

[!] FAILED calling virtualBox->OpenVirtualDiskImage(Bstr(argv[0]), vdi.asOutParam()) at line 2415!
[!] Primary RC  = 0x80004005
[!] Full error info present: true , basic error info present: true 
[!] Result Code = 0x80004005
[!] Text        = Could not access hard disk image '/home/chris/.VirtualBox/VDI/WinXP.vdi' (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
[!] Component   = HardDisk, Interface: IHardDisk, {fd443ec1-000f-4f5b-9282-d72760a66916}
[!] Callee      = IVirtualBox, {76b25f3c-15d4-4785-a9d3-adc6a462beec}

That damn "VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND" error keeps popping up, but I thought I already fixed it in this post by doing the following:

This is a really easy fix
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... ualbox+usb
------------------------------------------
Courtesy of STEVE1961 on ubuntuforums.org

or just add this line to /etc/fstab

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=1002,devmode=664 0 0

the devgid number is the vboxusers group id (check to see if yours is different)

Once you've saved and closed fstab just do a sudo mount -a and you should be good to go.

What am I doing wrong now?

EDIT:
Ahh, wait a second, now I think I see what's going on... It's trying to access the file in:
/home/user/.VirtualBox/VDI/WinXP.vdi
but the file is actually located in:
/home/user/.VirtualBox/WinXP.vdi

Why is it assuming it's in the VDI directory? When I setup my very 1st VM it didn't place the *.vdi file in the /VDI/ folder, how come it's now assuming the /VDI/ folder is where they should be stored? and how can I remedy?

I manually created the VDI folder, and moved the WinXP.vdi file into it, and then loaded VB:


That didn't go over well

So I ran the following:

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$ VBoxManage clonevdi WinXP.vdi WinXP-Work.vdi
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 1.5.4
(C) 2005-2007 innotek GmbH
All rights reserved.

0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%

I repeated to create WinXP-Play.vdi, And then moved WinXP.vdi back to the parent directory and all is well...
Now I have my base install and 2 sparate XP installs for work & play

[ShellyCat]

That is really cool!!!!!!! Worth bookmarking!
(I looked for a thumbs-up icon to give you, but there isn't one.)

Thanks for posting your experiments and results...don't know if I have any reason to do this now (on my laptop), but it's something I could play with a few months down the road.

[BassKozz]

That is really cool!!!!!!! Worth bookmarking!
(I looked for a thumbs-up icon to give you, but there isn't one.)

Thanks for posting your experiments and results...don't know if I have any reason to do this now (on my laptop), but it's something I could play with a few months down the road.

Glad I could help...
Also just realized instead of doing that moving around I could've just ran the following command:

Code: Select all

$ VBoxManage clonevdi /home/user/.VirtualBox/WinXP.vdi WinXP-Work.vdi

and that would've forced VBoxManage to look in the /.VirtualBox/ folder instead of the /.VirtualBox/VDI/ folder