virtualbox.org

Hi - just a quickie.

Wondered if anyone knew a way to set via registry/script the File > Preferences > General > Default Machine Folder setting.

Cheers if so.

VirtualBox does not use the Windows registry.

What are you trying to do? If you don't like the current setting, why not just change it in the obvious way, using the GUI?

Hi - I'm setting up VirtualBox for students in a school. We need to run a VM to drive a milling machine. I'd like to add a virtual machine to VirtualBox for the students to use, but they have no access to browse C: although resources a programs can run from C: and shortcuts to subfolders can give any necessary access.

If the xp VM I need them to run is deployed to a folder in C: they'll need to change their preferences to the C: folder themselves, then import the appliance themselves.

This will just be too much for them to handle I think, so I'm looking for a way to automate the process somewhat, and hopefully entirely.

That's what I'm shooting for anyway - if anyone reading has any ideas I'd be grateful for pointers.

Cheers.

Miscbrah wrote:Hi - I'm setting up VirtualBox for students in a school. We need to run a VM to drive a milling machine.

How so? Are you are trying to run EMC2 from a Linux VM? How is it talking to the outside world? - presumably some kind of USB controller board. Have you tested that it works in a VM? I would have thought that it might be quite fussy about latencies. All questions just curiosity.

Miscbrah wrote:I'd like to add a virtual machine to VirtualBox for the students to use, but they have no access to browse C: although resources a programs can run from C: and shortcuts to subfolders can give any necessary access. If the xp VM I need them to run is deployed to a folder in C: they'll need to change their preferences to the C: folder themselves, then import the appliance themselves.

If the VM already exists then the "Default Machine Folder" setting was irrelevant to you anyway, as that only controls where new VMs will be created, not where existing VMs are loaded from. I guess if you were to create some kind of linked clone then it might be relevant to the location of the clone.

Have a look at the "VBoxManage clonevm" documentation in the manual. I would imagine that you could provide a script which uses this to create a linked clone, it would also use the "--basefolder" switch to control which folder the clone is created in.