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I am running an OSX guest on a virtualbox on an OSX host (both Yosemite). I wish to restore a time capsule backup onto the OSX guest. I can see the internet from the OSX guest, and I can see the time capsule from the host. I launch migration assistant from within the guest but it cannot see the time capsule. What should I do?

I also tried connecting the host to another mac and use migration assistant to transfer files from that into the OSX guest, but it would not see the other mac. I tried connecting them directly with a thunderbolt cable and with an ethernet cable; no joy either way.

Are there special virtualbox settings to be set in order to pass through the thunderbolt etc? Do I need some special networking options to see the time capsule on the lan?

You cant. VirtualBox has no Thunderbolt support for OSX guests. Nor does it have USB support. There are no guest additions for OSX guests. In other words, OSX is not an officially supported guest.

Uhmm... OK, so no thunderbolt and no usb, but at least ip networking is supported, and that's the normal way to reach the time capsule... is there no network setting I can tweak that would let me see it?

Not that I'm aware of. My Time Capsule is connected to the Ethernet and my Macs talk to it by WiFi. Since guests have no Wifi you can't using that method. Shared folders would work but no guest additions, no shared folders. You might be able to set up some kind of network share but that is outside the scope of VirtualBox support.

If my host and my time capsule are both on wired ethernet, wouldn't this in theory make the guest able to reach the time capsule via ip without needing wifi, thunderbolt, usb or any of the other unsupported things? (but it doesn't work with the default settings)

Simpler than I thought. Turn on file sharing on your host. Make sure the network adapter for the guest is set to Bridged. You should see the Time Capsule in the Finder sidepane of your guest. Then run Migration Assistant.

Aha! Thanks a lot! This one worked!

Welcome.