Exporting appliance from one machine to another

[drDubbelklick]

I guess this has been the subject of discussions before, but this one has a twist to it.

I exported the virtual machine by means of the option File/Export Appliance.

I had guest additions installed at the virtual machine I was exporting, and when I took the "ova" file to another computer and tried to use File/Import Appliance, the virtual machine refused to start, stating it needed guest additions. As far (little) as I know about Virtual Box, you must have the machine up and running in order to install the guest addons, which made the whole process a Catch-22.

Obviously I must have done something wrong when I exported the appliance OR importing it, so can someone please tell me, or direct me to an already existing topic, how to proceed with this seemingly simple operation.

As part of the export, a dialog popped up, "Appliance Settings", but there is no mentioning about guest additions to configure or remove in that dialog box, so I am a bit confused whether I should click "Restore defaults" or not. When I did NOT do that yesterday, this problem arose.

My new machine, which I am exporting from, has a C and D drive (partitions on the same physical hard disk), in addition to a recovery partition.

The old one I was trying to import the appliance to only has a C drive.

Best Regards,

Thomas

[mpack]

I can't think of any reason for a VM to require the guest additions in order to start. In fact the notion is impossible since the GAs are simply programs running under the guest OS and therefore can't be running until after the guest has booted.

You must be misinterpreting the message. Please provide full information: full and precise error message wording (or a screenshot of the error dialog), log file etc. See Minimal information needed for assistance.

Edit:  It occurs that you may be referring to the extension pack, which is required on the host if you want to run a VM that enables virtual USB support. You will definitely get an error message about that if the extpack isn't installed. The extension pack btw is installed on the host - no VMs need to have been created to do that. It's a plugin for VirtualBox, the program running on the host. The extension pack (unlike the Guest Additions) does not consist of programs for the guest.

[Perryg]

One other thing that I have see cause this is exporting the guest with the guest additions still in the virtual drive and when importing it does not see them. This has been fixed so many times but it keeps getting broken. Make sure that you do not have anything mounted in the guests virtual CD/DVD, export again then see if the import works. Oh and just in case you have shared folders you should remove them as well before exporting since the new host will not have the same structure.

[drDubbelklick]

One other thing that I have see cause this is exporting the guest with the guest additions still in the virtual drive and when importing it does not see them. This has been fixed so many times but it keeps getting broken. Make sure that you do not have anything mounted in the guests virtual CD/DVD, export again then see if the import works. Oh and just in case you have shared folders you should remove them as well before exporting since the new host will not have the same structure.

Thanks for the tip about shared folders! I had a vague suspicion about that. I will try to detach anything mounted and get back to you!

/Thomas