I am a student worker at a small Northwest college, and I want to use one base Ubuntu Virtual machine that can be accessed from 3 different user accounts. This Ubuntu virtual machine is used by computer science students who have been known to crash the Ubuntu system.
The Host system is Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit, that also runs DeepFreeze software. I have a separate 20 GB partition that is used for my ThawSpace (unfrozen). This is where I keep the Ubuntu VHD so any changes made to the VM will stay after the host is restarted. For those who are not familiar with DeepFreeze, it returns the OS to its original state at every reboot yet allows changes while the machine is running.
I have found the thread for using the environmental variable to be able to use 1 VM for 3 users, but What I would like is that each user be able to modify their own VM without effecting the other with those changes. My thought was a parent drive with differencing disks for each user.
I would also like for the students to be able to repair this Ubuntu system on their own when they crash it. I could store a copy of the parent disk on the frozen host machine that they could copy and replace the broken one with. Would this cause problems because the VM configuration is stored on the frozen partition of the host machine? If so can I simply install VirtualBox on my ThawSpace partition and not have configuration files stored on my frozen host?
One of our students attempted to re-install ubuntu to our current system, and this caused the VM to be inaccessable. I would like to avoid this issue in the future, so any pointers would be welcome