Clone Virtual Machine

[clyfton]

I have been researching a way to clone a virtualbox. What I have found on the Internet is dated. I was also unable to find anything recent or relevant searching the forum. I also notice a vm copying with snapshots topic on the front page. I still can't seem to find what I'm looking for.

I would like to use VM and Fedora as test platforms and as such they will become corrupt over time. I would like to go through all the steps once to get a good test environment, preserve the original and just use disposable clones in testing. I have tried various methods, to include import/export and VBoxManage_clonehd as mentioned in the user guide. I'm just not able to get it to work. Please advise.

[Etepetete]

Take a look at this to clone your VDI. If you are using the newest version, then make a copy of your VM folders and a copy of your VirtualBox.xml after creating your initial copies. Then when the VMs become corrupt, you can just copy the backups of the VM folders over the corrupted ones. If the whole setup gets hosed, overwrite the VirtualBox.xml with the backup and replace all VM folders with their backups and you should be able to continue as of day one, when you created your initial setup.

[clyfton]

Thanks ... I'll give it a try

[NeBlackCat]

Other possibilities:

1) Use snapshots (or immutable disks) and simply delete the difference when done, and then start again.

2) there are good tools around to let you define your Linux configuration once, and then have it automatically rebuilt from the install media with a single button push. That lets you always work from the current releases of your chosen distros, which may or may not be what you want. I can't remember the names of any (one was covered on a FLOSS podcast a few months ago), but a quick Google should reveal more.

[clyfton]

Ok, thanks

1) I took my first snapshot and I'll see how that works out.

2) I don't really have enough information to search google for the "single button push" solution you mentioned.

Cliff

[NeBlackCat]

I'll dig through my records and see if I can find the name of the project.

[OrdinaryAverageGuy]

I keep waiting for this feature to be integrated into the GUI. For some reason they like to limit the simple everyday features to vboxmanage only.