Vbox Debian VM failure on creating optical drive

[michaelayres]

HI, rookie VM user here; I have searched forum first but don't find particular question, but it is probably answered long ago. At work, I have a HP desktop running Win7 and we are trying to set up a Debian Linux VM for me; No users in my shop have admin rights on their desktops. Oracle VBox installs and Debian partially installs, but after shell terminal black window comes up, we get error message "failure to create optical drive." I'm suspecting my admin rights, but I think we got this error too when a support person with full rights got same error. Do I have to create a hard partition for the Vbox Linux instance? I thought the whole point was a virtual machine, not messing with the physical HD, but creating a virtual HD. Pardon the rookie question, but help appreciated. I run a virtual Debian Linux on my personal MacBook for school work, which is kind of redundant - but instructors wants us all using same VM Debian for assignments, not Macbook Unix, but would like one at work too. The office security officer has granted this exception for me.

Tks

[mpack]

If the VM launches then VirtualBox's work is pretty much done. Everything beyond that is a Debian support issue, and should really be discussed on a Debian forum.

That said, you can post a picture of the error message here and we'll see what gives. The error message can't mean that VirtualBox failed when trying to create a CD, because all that is done before the VM starts. The message must be coming from the guest OS and it doesn't mean what you might think it means.

Taking a wild guess, I'd say you're trying to run the live CD instead of installing it to the (virtual) hard disk of the VM as you should, and it's probably failing when trying to create a RAMdisk to install to, and failing due to lack of RAM. However this is idle speculation without more hard facts.

Minimum information needed for assistance.

[michaelayres]

Thanks; I think you are correct that it's a Debian error, as the VMBox launches it OK. Here is the error, which is slightly different than yestersday, when it had language about a optical drive. I guess it's clear Debian is not able to boot or access a virtual HD.

Debian error.jpg (39.49 KiB) Viewed 849 times

[michaelayres]

All solved. Desktop support downloaded and installed a latere version of Ubuntu that works. But, I wanted Debain anyway, so I was able to download the ISO, burn to CD and install in VBox. So, I am up and running. I will go over the Debian support for my Linux questions.

Tks

[mpack]

The "no bootable medium" error comes from the VM BIOS and means precisely what it says: no bootable disk is currently attached to the VM. E.g. no OS has yet been installed on the virtual HD, and you removed the CD as well.