Using symbolic links to move directories and files

[JSM09A]

It appears that VirtualBox does not treat symbolic links as I would expect. In particular, I moved a virtual machine directory to a new location and installed a symbolic link from the previous location to the new directory. After some minor snapshot and (linked) cloning, VirtualBox eventually reported the Virutal Machines as "Inaccesible".

Some folks have reported correcting such problems by simply using "VBoxManage showhdinfo <disk.vdi>" on the reported missing drive. It seems that "showhdinfo" is NOT able to follow the symbolic link and report on the contents of the vdi. However, in agreement with the other posters, simply running this command did seem to restore the "accessibility" of the Virtual Machines (until the next system reboot) !

I noticed that the actual path to the VDI is being recorded in various files. I would have expected that VirtualBox would follow the symbolic links from that location and properly report the vdi contents.

Is there a reason that Virtual Machine directories and/or disk VDI files can not be moved and replaced with symbolic links ? Is there any documentation on if/when this might be acceptable ?

Thanks !

VirtualBox 7.0.10 on Debian Bookworm host

[scottgus1]

Some folks have reported correcting such problems by simply using "VBoxManage showhdinfo <disk.vdi>" on the reported missing drive.

"Some folks", like JSM09A? viewtopic.php?t=110593


What other reports of this happening have you found?

[JSM09A]

>> What other reports of this happening have you found?

https://superuser.com/questions/330095/ ... lbox-4-1-2
Answer #2 "The solution which worked for me was simply to execute the following command:

cd ~/VirtualBox VMs/Win7-VirtualBox/Snapshots
VBoxManage showhdinfo \{ab625445-c564-4ed5-ab89-2a3e75de7d6c\}.vdi

After that the problem was gone and it works again very well. "

Which references:
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14375

AND

viewtopic.php?p=179673#p179673

"Luckily I was able to use vboxmanage showhdinfo against the actual VDI files to match up the file paths with the UUids and re-create the entries in the <Mediaregistry> section. This not only restored this VM to full functionality but also corrected the 'inaccesible' status of the other 3 Vms plus restored all the entries in the Virtual Media Manager."