Anyway to Specify the UUID of a Virtual Hard Drive?

[saberman]

Given a virtual hard drive with a uuid of xxx... is there anyway to create a copy with a specific uuid (i.e. yyy...)?

[mpack]

"VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid" allegedly has that ability, though I don't have the details as I've never needed it.

Why do you think you need this feature? It isn't required for any of the purposes you have given in your other threads.

[saberman]

From: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... &start=690
But yes, the UUID of the drive has to match the UUID for that drive listed in the media registry (whereever the media registry is stored).

I want to maintain a fully patched Virtual Hard Drive as a base that I can clone for my test machines. The process I intend to follow will be:
1. Boot the VM that uses the base vdi and make sure it has the most current patches.
2. Shutdown the VM and make a backup copy of the base vdi.
3. Boot the base machine and run SysPrep.
4. Clone the SysPrep'ed image setting its uuid to that of the vdi in the target test machine.
5. Copy the SysPrep'ed image file over the one in the target test machine
6. Boot the test machine, enter the associated license and activate it.

Please note that steps 4-6 will have to be performed for each test VM that I need.

[saberman]

"VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid" allegedly has that ability

That generates and assigns a new uuid -- it doesn't let you specify the uuid to be assigned.

[mpack]

ISTM if you remount the hard disk in each test clone then you don't need to match the UUID of the old drive.

As to sethduuid, a member of the devteam on these forums indicated that this cmd took an additional optional argument which was the replacement UUID. As I already said, I have not needed this feature hence I have not checked if that is true, or recorded the details.