vboxmanage clonevm problem

[diamond_D]

I'm having an issue trying to use clonevm. Appears to be a duplicate UUID issue not allowing the machine to be registered. I can't find the option to create a unique UUID.

Code: Select all

delslige@ubuntu-P5K:/vbox00/Fedora-VM1$ vboxmanage clonevm {d609dda2-c161-4d6f-b3e4-4e6e0cd34d81} --name Fedora-VM1-clone2.vdi --basefolder /vbox01/Fedora-VM1/clone/
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...^@50%...60%...
Progress state: NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG
VBoxManage: error: Cannot register the hard disk '/vbox01/Fedora-VM1/clone/Fedora-VM1-clone2.vdi/Fedora-VM1-clone2.vdi.vdi' {77c5f75d-670b-4ef1-81e1-223fd5147fd3} because a hard disk '/vbox01/Fedora-VM1/clone/Fedora-VM1-clone2.vdi/Fedora-VM1-clone2.vdi.vdi' with UUID {45dde4dd-5661-49ec-9c58-e66c0627bbb2} already exists
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG (0x80070057), component Machine, interface IMachine, callee

[diamond_D]

I can't figure it out and I think I've corrupted something as the VM became inaccessible inside VirtualBox Manager. I'm a bit confused between the clonevm and clonehd functions and what I should be using. I was simply trying to create a clone with a different UUID that would be registered and ready for use.

[mpack]

A VM is more than a hard disk, a VM is a specification for an entire virtual PC which will include CPU features, networking, USB and serial ports etc, and may include several hard disks as well as other storage media such as virtual floppy or CD images.

So, a VM is not just a disk image.

The clonevm command clones an entire VM.

The clonehd command clones an single hard disk image.

It's hard to tell what you did exactly because I can't identify an object type knowing only its UUID. It looks like you called the clonevm command but gave it the UUID of a hard disk image (*), or vice versa. That is nonsense of course, and I would not expect it to go very far... but it looks like it got further than I would expect, with general confusion all round. If you can pin down the details of what you did then perhaps a bug report would be merited.

(*) Notice the doubled up VDI name, i.e. xyz.vdi.vdi. I suspect that means that you gave the cloned VM a name of x.vdi. The default name of the primary hdd in that VM would be <vmname>.vdi, hence x.vdi.vdi.