virtualbox.org

Am I missing something, or is there no way to use vBoxmanage to remove a setextradata line?

A typo in the device name when setting IRQDelay borks the VM because it looks for a non-existent device on startup. ...and fails with a rather non-helpful error message.

It hit the problem doing a new install, so it was no problem to throw away the machine and start over, but it would be a pain on a fully configured VM.

Sure there is. Just run the setextradata with no value and it will be removed.

See VBoxManage in your VirtualBox users manual.

VBoxManage setextradata global|<uuid>|<name>
<key>
[<value>] (no value deletes key)

Oh! Thanks! Makes sense.

But... I thought I was looking at the manual: http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html#idp14136624

...which isn't a wiki, or I would add a note there now. Doing a search of that whole file, I do see now that it's mentioned in the Command Overview, but not in the detailed description of the command to which you're sent if you click on the vBoxManage getextradata/setextradata entry in the table of contents.

Thanks again!

I went into the same problem but with an extra issue.

I have special characters in the "name" and passing it plain and escaped doesn't remove the line
Any thoughts on this?

First try with the following:
VBoxManage setextradata "VBoxInternal/Devices/VMMDev/0/Config/
GetHostTimeDisabled"

As a last resort you can edit the *.vbox manually but make sure to back it up first and also that everything VirtualBox is shut down first.