vbox upgrade without upgrading guest additions

[fourchette]

Each version of VirtualBox, even minor releases, ship with their own version of the Guest
Additions. While the interfaces through which the VirtualBox core communicates with the Guest
Additions are kept stable so that Guest Additions already installed in a VM should continue to
work when VirtualBox is upgraded on the host, for best results, it is recommended to keep the
Guest Additions at the same version.

seen in the lastest documentation pdf page 54

i am running VBOX 3.2.0

but since an upgrade of the vbox host was implying an upgrade of the vbox addionnal clients, i have refrained myself from doing it as it would require to modify tons of snapshots.
It seems the music must have changed a bit now.
i know i wont be able to refrain from upgrading for even (not a good practice anyway), so i would rather prepare my setup to a pain-free upgrade process.

is a 3.2.0 -> 4.0.4 upgrade safe ?
regardless of the versions, what is the best option here ? any common pitfall to avoid i want to be aware of ?

thanks

[Sasquatch]

I've had VMs that I rarely boot and had therefore old additions installed. There were times I had some 2.1 version installed while 3.0 was already released. I had no problems upgrading the GA to the latest version at that time. I still have VMs with outdated GA and they still run fine, though not recommended. Your upgrade should not be a problem. But do upgrade to 4.0.6 instead .

[mpack]

But do upgrade to 4.0.6 instead .

Or even 4.0.8...

[fourchette]

knowing that GA version 2 coexists rather nicely with a VBOX 4 is rather reassuring.

at least they are not plain crashing or refusing to load.

does the existing feature will continue to work in your experience ?

feats i'm interested in
* shared folder
* usb

[Sasquatch]

USB is not a GA feature. SF is, and it's advised to not leave the GA on an older version for it, as it can produce strange behaviour or even failing to working.

[fourchette]

ok. good news then.

1. assuming i stop using shared folders (there are smb shares on the network anyway)
2. but since i do have snapshot where GA shared folders are enabled

anyone knows what would happen if I upgrade VBOX 3.2.0 => 4.0 ?

will the snapshot fail to load completely ?
will it load but turning on the VM will fail ?
will it load, turn on the VM and then crash ?
will it load, turn on the VM, but the shared folder will just cease to work ?

short answer is: "try and see" i guess... no?

[mpack]

short answer is: "try and see" i guess... no?

Precisely. If it was me I would make an Acronis backup of my XP host's drive first, then I could upgrade VBox and experiment to my hearts content without worrying about it.

But then again, if it was me then I wouldn't be using snapshots anyway.

[Sasquatch]

ok. good news then.

1. assuming i stop using shared folders (there are smb shares on the network anyway)
2. but since i do have snapshot where GA shared folders are enabled

anyone knows what would happen if I upgrade VBOX 3.2.0 => 4.0 ?

will the snapshot fail to load completely ?
will it load but turning on the VM will fail ?
will it load, turn on the VM and then crash ?
will it load, turn on the VM, but the shared folder will just cease to work ?

short answer is: "try and see" i guess... no?

SF definitions are in the VM settings. Having these settings in a snapshot state doesn't change anything or the current state, where you might have changed these definitions. You will only have to remove the definitions when you restore to a snapshot with these definitions. Only then will they matter.

[fourchette]

SF definitions are in the VM settings. [...] You will only have to remove the definitions when you restore to a snapshot with these definitions.

if it's not too much to ask, can you provide an example of such manual editing of VirtualBox.xml pls ?

raeson why i'm asking is that we've been repeatly stabbed in the back by vbox almost everytime we had to manually editing this file, even though at first glance it wasn't looking like so much of a trouble. well we are now very reluctant when it comes to editing this file by ourselves.

[Sasquatch]

I'm not talking about editing any file. Just when you restore to a certain snapshot, open the VM settings from the GUI and remove the SF definition. That's all. No need to edit the xml file.