Movin a VM from one computer to another

[janpeter]

Hi

I try to move a VM from one (Mac) computer to another but it does not work. I do the following:

1) Clone the VM on MBP

2) Copy the whole folder of the VM found in the main folder Virtual Box VMs to the other computer MacMini and put it in the same main folder on that computer.

3) Start VBox on the MacMini.

4) Use command Add machine...and choose the actual newly copied VM

Get the error message

Failed to open Virtual Machine located in.... (and the location is ok)

Cannot register the DVD image...
...CD/DVD image....
...already exists

Yes the MBP has a DVD player while the MacMini has not.
Is that the problem?
I would prefer to run the VM without reference to the DVD player,
but if that is the problem how do sort of dismount it from the first computer the MBP
before I clone it?

---

Both machines run Mac OS X 10.7.5 and Vbox 4.2.12 and the VM is a Windows XP SP3.

I have another VM on the Mac Mini that works so the VBox installation is ok.

Apppreciate some help or comments how to do this.
I have read the manual but I cannot see it talks much on this (obvious) subject.

Jan Peter

[mpack]

You have paraphrased the error message so I can't be sure, but this problem can be caused by having the GAs ISO still mounted in the VM, possibly complicated by changing Vbox versions or file paths. The only solution I know is to edit the .vbox manually to remove that reference.

[loukingjr]

I think the easiest way would be to create a new VM on your macmini with the appropriate settings, and attach the copy of the .vdi you made to the new machine. That works for me anyway.

[mpack]

Do NOT follow that advice if you use snapshots.

[loukingjr]

Do NOT follow that advice if you use snapshots.

I thought he said he cloned his VM which I thought merged any snaphots. But lately I've been a bit confused.

[mpack]

No, merging of snapshots is optional when cloning the VM.

[loukingjr]

No, merging of snapshots is optional when cloning the VM.

yes, full or linked. I assumed since he was moving it to a different machine he would of used full but, "you should never assume because..."

[mpack]

No, "full or linked" is a different option. When you do a full clone you have the option to then clone the current state only, or copy the entire snapshot structure.

[janpeter]

Hi

Thank you for your ideas.

Sorry for being not clear what I did. I did a clone of the current state and also "full" version and thus not "linked".

Instead of using this clone I now instead made an export to "ova" format.

The import on the MacMini worked fine and I tested a few programs on the VM at the MacMini and seems to work fine.

---

One asspect is that my VM (with WinXP SP3) has been used for a few years now and was done under VBox 2.2 but I have kept it intact through VBox 3.x and now 4.x.

On the MacMini I have only had VBox 4.x.

With this long background it is perhaps only "safe" to use export/import?

---

How sure can I be that this transfer to the MacMini is successful?
I vaguely remember that there are important drawbacks using export/import using "ova" compared to
moving the clone. Can someone brief me or point out where to read in the manual?

Jan Peter

[mpack]

Using Export/Import was a mistake. The VM may be working fine now, but the disks are now in VMDK format which means that certain software features (such as disk resize) will not be available to you. Also doing this changes the VM and disk UUIDs, which can cause problems with some guests OSs.

[janpeter]

Hi

Thank you for your advice, mpack and others.

I tried move the clone directly from the MBP to the Mac mini (file transfer over Mac to Mac over a third-party router).
This time it actually seems to work!

First time I might have had some small error in the transmission or so - I do not know.
Another possible reason (however small) is that I updated to VBox 4.2.14 on both machines from 4.2.12.
Anyway.

How can I be really sure that the trasferred VM to the other computer is not slightly corrupt somewhere?
I ran a few for me critical problems and used the web-broswer etc. Spend about half an hour and no problems.
What kind of test to check that the VM is correct?

Main thing is perhaps that this transferred cloned VM actually is actually an independent entity, which I somewhat doubted.

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When I am confident enough that the VM is ok on the Mac mini I plan to re-install VBox on my MBP since it has
a very long history (since VBox ver 2.x ) on that machine, while on the Mac mini I have VBox ver 4.x. After re-installing
VBox I then just use add of the VM that I managed to transfer to the Mac mini. In this way I will have the simplified
folder/file structure of VBox 4.x which is important for future the current and future VMs.

From other posts here I understand that I can just change the folder name of the VM and in this way make the VM
not accessible for the VM when I remove and un-install the VBox before I re-install it again.
In this way I avoid transferring the VM and a possible source of corruption.

How does this plan sound?

Jan Peter

[mpack]

You could run a disk check inside the guest, or you could do md5 checksum comparison (Google for details).

[janpeter]

Thanks for rapid reply. I will check md5 etc later.

In our other thread "Deleting parent VM" you mentioned in post starting "No, full clone...." that
we should look up .VirtualBox home folder.... and delete and so on there.

I find traces of VriualBox at two places (and I have a VBox history since ver 2.x).

a) - user/VirtualBox VMs
b) - user/Library/VirtualBox

In b) the subfolers Harddisks and VMs are rather empty actually.

But I do not find any folder .VirtualBox... so, what do you mean in your post referred to above?

---

Also I thought perhaps I really un-install VBox using the procedure supplied together with VBox 4.2.14
but does that procedure really account for traces back to VBox ver 2.x?

Also I am afraid that that re-installation may trace up a "my hidden" VM that I want to keep and add later.
So what does this un-installation procedure actually do?

Perhaps safer to delete manually?

Or use somethign like AppCleaner where I see what files that are found linked to the app and
I can choose to keep some of the files/folders found.

Thanks for your advice.

Jan Peter

[mpack]

<userdoc>/".VirtualBox" exists on Windows and Linux hosts. On Linux the "." makes the folder hidden. I don't use Mac hosts but given OS X's heritage I would expect that it's the same name with the same effect as Linux.

And incidentally, when I said that two folders existed, I assume you are aware that was in the context of discussing data only. If you want to count the program folder too then that's a third folder, but the question was what folders need to be copied when changing hosts, and in that case the program folder isn't relevant.