virtualbox.org

Hello everyone!

I have a big problem and am unable to solve it myself. For one year, I've ran Oracle VM Virtual Box on Win7 OS host with Neurodebian 8.0.0 installed on VM. In my stupidity at the installation a year ago, I only applied 40 gb of space for Neurodebian and it filled pretty quickly. I finally summoned some courage to extend storage space via a youtube guide and did the following according to instructions in the win7 cmd:

1) Converted the vmdk storage file to vdi with "VBoxManage clone hd "xxx.vmkd" "xxx.vdi" --format vdi"
2) Resized the .vdi file with "Vboxmanage modifyhd "xxx.vdi" --resize 81920
3) Converted the .vdi back to .vmkd with "Vboxmanage clonehd "xxx.vdi" "yyy.vmdk" --format vmdk" and renamed the NEW vmdk file.
4) Removed the original vmkd file from Vboxmanager neurodebian storage menu and replaced it with the new, extended version.

Then I couldn't get any further. Virtual box starts properly, but when I try to initiate Neurodebian 8.0.0, it first loads, then takes a while through the black screen of "loading..." and then presents the following error:
"fsck from util-linux 2.25.2
/dev/sdal: recovering journal
/dev/sdal: clean, 213518/2498560 files, 9482024/9985280 blocks
[ 10.939240] intel_rapl: no valid rapl domains found in package 0"

After this error msg, it sort of minimizes and maximizes the window a few times before going silent, nothing happens after that and Neurodebian wont load.

I've tried updating VM to no avail. Before starting, I backed up the original vmkd file to safe location in win7. To my understanding, this should contain all the data I had (39,7gb), although, so does the new version of vmkd, presenting 39,7/80 gb of space. Win7 back-upping to a previous timeline is out of the question, since I have no back-ups of my win7 system and concurrent files. I really need to get this thing working, at least to the point where I can get the data out from the back-up file and then maybe reinstall VM with more space.

Thank you in advance.

1. "Via a YouTube guide". We will not act as support for something you read or watched on some randomly selected site. If you want support then please refer instead to guidance given in the user manual, or in tutorials on this site.

2. Why are you messing about with VMDK? I.e. why jump through all those hoops to resize a "foreign" container format? Why not use the VirtualBox native format all the time?

My resize instructions would have been :-

a. Clone the VM (not the vmdk).
b. Resize the disk.

There was no need for all the other stuff.

And no, copying the VDI (or the VMDK) is not how you back up a VM. That carries the implicit assumption that the eyecatching largest file is the only one you need. In which case you might have asked yourself -- why do the other files exist at all? The correct way to back up a VM is to copy the entire VM folder to backup media.

Unfortunately, since you made no valid backup it is possible that you've already destroyed the VM. And, since the disk format choice is "unusual" you can't expect to find a great depth of repair experience here.

I'm assuming you didn't use snapshots, and that really would be fatal. The chances of discovery rather depend on what "NeuroDebian" is, and particularly what the filesystem is. It's normal to see grub errors when you clone a drive (easily fixed), but your errors look like something else, e.g. perhaps from the use of ZFS and/or LVM. In fact most guests would be oblivuous of the additional disk space until you ran "gparted", which I see no mention of.

Incidentally, cross posting is against the forum rules. I have deleted your other post.

I actually did copy the whole original folder of neurodebian to another location before I started tampering with it. However, when I try to access it, it gives me the following:

"Cannot register the hard disk 'O:\Neurodebian backup\Neurodebian 8.0.0 (64bit)\Neurodebian_8.0.0_amd64-disk1.vmdk (7d2582dc-dc36-404a-b5ef659291e73846) because a hard disk 'C:\Users\Dauthi\VirtualBox VMs\NeuroDebian 8.0.0 (64bit)\Neurodebian_8.0.0_amd64-disk1.vmdk' with UUID (7d2582dc-dc36-404a-b5ef659291e73846) already exists.

Should I try deleting the current vmdk file and copying the backup into the same location and retrying?

Dauthi wrote: "Cannot register the hard disk 'O:\Neurodebian backup\Neurodebian 8.0.0 (64bit)\Neurodebian_8.0.0_amd64-disk1.vmdk (7d2582dc-dc36-404a-b5ef659291e73846) because a hard disk 'C:\Users\Dauthi\VirtualBox VMs\NeuroDebian 8.0.0 (64bit)\Neurodebian_8.0.0_amd64-disk1.vmdk' with UUID (7d2582dc-dc36-404a-b5ef659291e73846) already exists.

That's because UUIDs have to be unique, and you still have the original VM and disks registered.

I suggest that you delete all broken and partial VMs and then restore the original VM folder from your backup. See Howto: Move a VM ("move" == "back up" == "restore").

I'll try that, thanks a lot