virtualbox.org

Hi

I have a vm with lots of snapshots about 7-8 and I can't remove (delete) the vm with out first removing each of the snapshots - this is a real pain

am I missing something ?

Known issue and needs to be solved. So no, currently you have to delete the snapshots manually.

What do I do if VB won't let me delete a snapshot? I have deleted all the "younger" ones, but the oldest one won't allow deletion. What I need to do is free up space. My Library>VirtualBox>Machines folder is using 44.3 GB, and the Library>VirtualBox>VDI is using 19.0. I tried deleting everything in the Library >VirtualBox > XP-Pro >Snapshots folder, but then VB wouldn't start so I returned them to their place. I think I only am using 19 GB for my real XP machine, but I can't handle having so much eaten up by what I think are snapshots. What do I do?

MacBook Pro Penryn (4,1; early 2008), 2.4GHz, Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM, running Snow Leopard (10.6.3) / latest version of VB, Win XP SP3

vboxuser799 wrote:What do I do?

Clone the last snapshot (using VBoxManage - see how in the manual) to a merged VDI, then recreate the VM using the new VDI. Once you are sure that everything works you can unregister then delete the VM and VDI which used the snapshots. Be careful when recreating the VM that you get every VM setting the same, particularly including IDE controller type, IO APIC setting and primary network card MAC address.

And oh yes: stop using snapshots!

mpack wrote:

vboxuser799 wrote:What do I do?

Clone the last snapshot (using VBoxManage - see how in the manual) to a merged VDI, then recreate the VM using the new VDI. Once you are sure that everything works you can unregister then delete the VM and VDI which used the snapshots. Be careful when recreating the VM that you get every VM setting the same, particularly including IDE controller type, IO APIC setting and primary network card MAC address.

And oh yes: stop using snapshots!

Thanks. I'll try it when I've got some time to invest. This stuff seems to gobble time.

vboxuser799 wrote:

mpack wrote:

vboxuser799 wrote:What do I do?

Clone the last snapshot (using VBoxManage - see how in the manual) to a merged VDI, then recreate the VM using the new VDI. Once you are sure that everything works you can unregister then delete the VM and VDI which used the snapshots. Be careful when recreating the VM that you get every VM setting the same, particularly including IDE controller type, IO APIC setting and primary network card MAC address.

And oh yes: stop using snapshots!

Well, here's what I finally did when disk space got VERY rare:

First, I tried to learn how to do what mpack wrote above, and got totally lost in the documentation. I found some tutorials or write-ups (http://srackham.wordpress.com/cloning-a ... -machines/, http://joshprowse.com/virtualbox-how-to ... te-a-virtu). Be sure to read them ALL the way through before starting this time-consuming cloning business!

After reading through that stuff and starting to do what was recommended in the first tutorial, I decided to try the File>Export Appliance and then File>Import appliance. My problem was that I had some "undeletable vdi's on my drive eating a lot of space. I could tell by using the OmniDiskSweeper.app for Mac OS X.

I had virtually no space on my main harddrive, so I exported to an external drive. Then I deleted all the files in the Library>VirtualBox folder that were the big space eaters (I deleted everything, even the "good" stuff since I couldn't tell what was good and what was bad.

Then I just launched virtualbox.app and it complained that my vm's were not right, so I just deleted them in the control panel. Then I imported the stuff from the external drive, and now I have a good, clean VM without having any extraneous files (snapshots I couldn't delete).

HTH.