clonevdi problem with OpenSuSE 10.3 guest

[apple3feet]

I've had several tries to copy an OpenSuSE 10.3 guest to another machine. I use VBoxManage cloneVDI (from VB ver 1.5.4) to clone the hard disk to an external USB disk, and then try to start the cloned image on the new machine. It gets some way into the boot, but fails with

Invoking in-kernel resume from /dev/sda1
Attempting manual resume
Waiting for device /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB...-part2 to appear:..... Could not find /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB...-part2.

I've successfully used the above procedure fro other VMs, but this one just won't go!

Does anyone have any ideas?

[apple3feet]

A simple file copy works - but it's not ideal. There's something in this VDI that cloneVDI doesn't reporoduce correctly.

[frank]

The reason is that the UUID of the image changes. This is necessary to allow VirtualBox to identify the copy and the original as different files. OpenSUSE 10.3 obviously uses the disk ID (which VirtualBox creates from the UUID of the image) to identify the boot drive. So to solve your problem you have to adjust the disk ID if your guest boot drive in /boot/grub/menu.lst. Look for a disk ID which looks like scsi-SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB5cfdb1e2-c251e503. Do

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hdparm -i /dev/sda

in your guest and use the displayed disk ID to identify your disk in /boot/grub/menul.lst.

[leeand00]

Do you mean on the original vm before you create a clone of it (change the ID of the drive?)

Because when mine loads up with the same problem as frank there is no /boot/grub/menul.lst

Thank you,
Andrew J. Leer

[Sasquatch]

Do you mean on the original vm before you create a clone of it (change the ID of the drive?)

Because when mine loads up with the same problem as frank there is no /boot/grub/menul.lst

Thank you,
Andrew J. Leer

Did you clone your VDI while the VM had snapshots? If so, clone it again after you got rid of them (either discard them or merge them to the VM).
If you didn't clone it with snapshots, then you can edit the Grub boot line (if you get that far) to change the boot parameter from the UUID to it's device mount point, which would be /dev/sda1. You can then, when the VM is booted, use blkid to find the new UUID and use that in your /etc/fstab and the Grub config file (usually /boot/grub/menu.lst, but some distro's call it /boot/grub/grub.conf or something like that).

[leeand00]

Sasquatch,

I didn't have any snapshots when I made the clone, I merged them all into the current state.

How do I go about getting in that far? I get a prompt, but grub is no where to be found.

Also does it matter that I made the clone on a 32-bit machine (XP) and that I'm trying it out on a 64-bit machine (Vista)?

I really just want to try it out to make sure that the backup is good, to prevent another "oh no! Now I have to spend another month installing the development environment" moment/month.

Using VB 2.0.6

Also, is there anyway I can just try it out on the same 32-bit machine without axing out all of the work I did to set it up?

Thank you,
Andrew J. Leer

[leeand00]

I tried loading the clone I made in fail-safe mode, but to no avail. I still can't get to the grub.conf thing on the harddrive.

Should I boot it with a live disk to fix this?

[Sasquatch]

I tried loading the clone I made in fail-safe mode, but to no avail. I still can't get to the grub.conf thing on the harddrive.

Should I boot it with a live disk to fix this?

Do'h, that's also possible . Don't forget to mount the hard disk . Use sudo blkid for the UUID, which you can paste in the grub config and your fstab.

[leeand00]

But if you mount off of a live CD and than the run the command:

sudo blkid

gives you something different does it not:?:

[Sasquatch]

But if you mount off of a live CD and than the run the command:

sudo blkid

gives you something different does it not:?:

If you can see the drive, it shouldn't matter. You will see something like this:

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/dev/sde2: UUID="95563813-1016-49d5-97eb-aaf7ee843f34" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"

[leeand00]

It seems to have worked...sort of...I must have made the clone when before I merged the snapshots. I'm going to try it again tomorrow.

I'll let you know what happens, thank you for your help Sasquatch!

[leeand00]

Well as it turns out, it looks like virtual box is telling me that the snapshots are merged when infact they are not merged!

However I did find in:

~/.VirtualBox/Machines/OSB Development Box/Snapshots/

What appear to be some another .vdi file it has a funny names like:
{34da893a-0eda-4051-a305-7176adfe12bf}.vdi which almost looks like ah UUID come to think of it....


And there is also a file with the same name that has a .SAV extension.

???

[leeand00]

Okay it worked! Thanks Sasquatch! *Gives Sasquatch a big harry hug!*

[Sasquatch]

Eww, did you have to do that?
Glad it works now.