VirtualBox 5.0 Update Precautions

[OraOra]

With great interest I have read through https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressr ... 70915.html and am now wondering if I should update from 4.3.28 ? The new capabilities are mouth-watering though I have a tiny bit of worry something might go wrong during the update and I will have to set up the VMs again.

What methods of backing up or imaging do I have specifically with VirtualBox please?

Can I simply backup the VM folder that is on another partition from the VB install or does the VB install have specific files that are "connected" to the VM folder and I would have to back up those as well or make an image of those and the entire VB install to be on the safe side?

In case some VMs break during update I would like to go back to the working 4.3.28 version with the working VMs of that.

Thank you for any help or info with this. It is not urgent.

Best Regards

[noteirak]

To be as close as 100% safe as possible:

• Shutdown every VM
• Make sure VBoxSVC has finished running (it can take up to 6 min)
• Copy all VMs to another location (same disk is fine)
• Backup the .VirtualBox folder of the user running the VMs
• Update VirtualBox
• Start VMs

If failure:

• Shutdown VirtualBox totally
• Remove new version and install old version of VirtualBox
• Copy the backup of .VirtualBox to its original location & overwrite file. Don't move the backup, still keep it for now.
• Start your VMs again.

If failure:

• Shutdown virtualbox again
• Do a full restore (.VirtualBox and VMs)

[OraOra]

Excellent advice!

I will follow this procedure and report back if something went wrong.

Thank you very much!