Open VDI generated on Mac on Windows or Linux Guests.

[socratis]

Hi everyone,

I would like to create a VDI with Ubuntu on my macbook version 10.14.5 and share it with a couple of students that use Windows 10, is this possible? If that so, do I have to use any specific setting on my Virtualbox at the moment of create that VDI? or just create it on Mac, copy it to windows and open it on Windows 10?

Sorry for the silly question,

Cesar

[socratis]

I would like to create a DVI

What's a DVI? I'm not completely sure I understand the question. And why are you posting on the "OSX Guests" section?

[pachequin]

Sorry for the confusion, I meant VDI file. And I posted here because i didnt know where this topic fits.

Thank you so much.

Best

[socratis]

OK, I thought so, I just had to make sure. I fixed the title and the typos in your first message.

Now, VDI is the equivalent of a hard drive. You just want to have a shared hard drive or a Virtual Machine (VM)? Can you describe the usage scenario first and then we're going to figure how and if you can do it.

For example, do you want the VMs to be independent or shared? Do you want them to revert each time they're used? Please describe the usage scenario.

[pachequin]

thank you so much for your help. We are going to give a course of molecular dynamics that runs on Linux. These course is for undergraduate students and we always have problems when we ask them to install the software because they do not have the same background using Linux (most of them use Windows). I wanted to built a Virtual machine on my macbook with all the required software for the course and share it with them. I have tested an ubuntu vdi archive and share it with two students (both Windows users) and we have some issues about the grub:

error: invalid arch-independent ELF magic.
Entering rescue mode ...
grub rescue

I dont know if this problem is related to windows or my VDI file. I would like to know if I could prevent this error so I can share the DVI with all the participants without any problem.

Thank you for your time and help.

Best

[socratis]

You sound like a fairly new user to VirtualBox. Since you are expected to know some basic terms before we engage in a meaningful discussion, I would suggest to start by reading three small chapters from the User Manual:

• 1.2. Some terminology,
• 1.8. Creating your first virtual machine and
• 1.9. Running your virtual machine.

Or even better, read the whole chapter 1. First steps.

For example, as I told you, VDI is a hard disk. You don't give someone a hard disk and expect something meaningful. You give someone a VM, a whole Virtual Machine which includes one or more VDIs (hard disks).

The second thing that I asked you is how are the students going to be accessing the VM? They're going to have their own copy? They're going to share a copy on a server?

[mpack]

This topic clearly does not belong in "OS X Guests". The guest is Linux, but even that isn't very relevant. Moving it to "Using VirtualBox".

error: invalid arch-independent ELF magic.
Entering rescue mode ...
grub rescue

I dont know if this problem is related to windows or my VDI file.

I would guess that it's neither.

First, can we please emphasise that a VDI is a hard disk. You do not clone PCs by copying the hard disk, you must clone the entire VM, i.e. the motherboard description too. The fact that VDIs are large doesn't make them the only important file.

Ok, given that you have a clone of the VM, your problem is most likely that you have a grub boot script that references the boot drive using its UUID. This is quite common in Linux boot scripts. However the drive UUID changes when a clone is created, otherwise it would not be possible to mount the clone on the same host - it would conflict.

So, one solution is to modify the grub script so that the drive is identified by device name rather than id. I'm not au fait with Linux, but I believe the device name would look something like "/dev/sda".

Another possibility is not to clone the VM at all, simply copy the VM folder to the student PC. That way all UUIDs are retained and grub will be happy. This does mean that you can't mount the copied VM on your own PC, but I assume you really don't need to. See the related FAQ Howto: Move a VM.

[pachequin]

Thank you so much for your suggestions. I'll give them a try.

Best.

Cesar