virtualbox.org

I was going to merge a snapshot, and because I found the wording of the operations confusing, I made a copy of the entire .virtualbox dir (I'm running VB under Kubuntu, with a Win2000 guest). When I merged, I messed up, so I copied my backup dir back to the original dir, but it still looks like I reverted to the snapshot instead of merging.

I figure all the data is still there, as I have both disk image and snapshot image, as well as the various config files. How do I get VB to figure out how it should be?

Edit: Alternatively, if someone could tell if it's possible to copy the files off the VDI/snapshot set without starting the virtual machine. It's several weeks worth of job on the line here...

Restore the VDI and snapshot files to their original location, then restore the machine.xml file, then check the master virtualbox.xml file if all references to the VM and snapshots are correct.

Since I copied the entire .virtualbox directory and put it all back, the should already be correct, shouldn't it?

The key file here is the virtualbox.xml file. If you copied all contents back and the virtualbox.xml file was one of the files that you copied and put back it should be correct. You need to look at that file to see if it lists you snapshots. If they do then you should close VirtualBox and then reopen it to see if the snapshots show up.

I think I've found the problem, although I don't have the solution. Apparently, VB stores settings elsewhere as well, because if i just deleted everyting in .VirtualBox, it still remembered the machine. Ideas?

Do a search for virtualbox.xml.
Then you will know where it is stored.

Already on it, I'm just waiting for the search to complete (big disk...).

Nope, now I'm stumped.

Here's what I know:

* There is no other VirtualBox.xml.
* It still remembers the virtual machine, even if I move the backup to another machine, so that there is no VirtualBox.xml at all.
* When I delete the contents of .VirtualBox and then start VB, some files are added there, so I'm not looking in the completely wrong place.

Obviously, settings are remembered somewhere, but I can't find it. Suggestions?

I also found out that search is a lot faster if I unmount network connections before doing a recursive search. File servers with some 20 million files don't like recursive searches.

Edit: Even uninstalled VB now, did a purge, then re-installed and it still finds some old config. Annoying...

OK, solved it. I just needed to reboot the host before starting VB after replacing the files. Apparently, some bit was still running and remembered the old settings.

Funny, the more stressed you are, the less likely you are to reboot...