virtualbox.org

I have a need to use 6 VM machines on 1 pc.
Do i need to go thru the complete OS installation procedure for each machine?

or is there some way i can copy and rename the machines ?

You would actually need to clone them if you want an easy way out other than the command line Look at this CloneVDI Tool
Or you would need to use the command line VBoxManage to do this.
I use mpacks CloneVDI tool all the time and it has never failed me yet.

for non-windows-host users, here's a somewhat out-of-date thread that basically describes it:

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... lone+howto

1. in the VDI directory: VBoxManage clonehd old.vdi new.vdi
2. VBoxManage createvm -register -name new
3. in the Machines directory: cp old/old.xml new/new.xml

then change the uuid and remove the AttachedDevice bit in the new.xml, then in virtualbox attach the hard disk and generate a new mac address

its all a bit drawn out and the sun guys promise there is a good reason to do it this way instead of just allowing us to copy a couple of files in a directory like vmware does.

The CloneVDI tool also runs on Wine, though not officially supported.