Query on using VDI and Snapshots on another host

[nardrish]

In my opinion, one of the purpose of Virtual machines is also the convenience of using it as it is on another physical box. It is fairly easy to port over VMWare or Virtual PC virtual machines from one physical box to another, start it up and get it running as long as the application and preferences are installed on the same path as the initial host.

I love Virtual Box's speed, light weight and the power (functions & features) packed in it's light weight application compared to it's counterparts. But I just can't copy out the vdi files and the related snapshots I've created from one machine and use it as it is on another.

I've basically got 3 components:
1) Host A (my computer)
2) external portable HDD
3) Host B (friend's computer)

On Host A, I installed Virtual Box 3.0.6 application on C Drive and created the machines on the external HDD spending hours creating the machines and snapshots along the way. Happily I then took the external HDD to my friend's home, installed Virtual Box 3.0.6 on his C drive, plugged in my external portable HDD and assigned it the same drive letters as I had on my home computer.

Next, I fiddled around with "C:\Documents and Settings\friendpc\.VirtualBox\Virtualbox.xml" and changed the "MachineEntry uuid" to match with my home's computer and ensuring the entry matches up with the xml file where the VDI is. The entry in the file is called "Machine uuid".

When I start up the application, it now complains that it cannot create the entry <MyVirtualMachineName> because it has child snapshots. Grrrr...

Fine. Then I click on File, Virtual Media Manager and verify that the snapshots are correctly attached (as it expands to the correct number of snapshots, so it means that they are linked correctly). Closing that box I then click on NEW, Next, give it a new name, assign RAM size, Use Existing Hard Disk and select the disk concerned. After going through the setup, I then realise that I do not get the snapshots in this new setup.

Can some kind soul advise me how do I get it working on another box, please? I don't believe it is not portable. I've read in the forums that snapshots is not one of VirtualBox's greatest strengths, but hey! It has done well in many areas and has beat the competition with speed and functionality, except one which apparently is the area of my concern as I can't get it up on another machine with similar settings. I must be missing something which I can't seem to figure out. But yes, other virtual machines with NO snapshots come up just fine on my friend's machine

Suggestions anyone?

Best Regards,

Ezra.

[nardrish]

Pls close this topic.

What I did was to copy the virtualbox.xml from documents and settings from my home computer to my friend's computer since VirtualBox is a new setup there. Everything works perfectly fine now. I just can't figure out why the manual editing didn't work. But again, it's manual (although it was a copy and paste of some whole sections). So it's probably prone to errors or ommissions somewhere, I guess....

The guest OS was Windows 2003 server 180days licesnse from Microsoft's website installed with AD and PKI. PKI is failing but that's a different issue I guess.... probably something to do with a different hardware, like network card I guess..

Cheers..

[vbox4me2]

You need Bridge mode for PKI to work.