Get a system going for having a library of ubuntu and win7 machines in virtualbox

- goal: to make it easy to save states of virtual machines, move them, etc.

    - opening and changing current ubuntu

        - made a file and saved with window open

        - closed machine

    - I can't change the machine while saved (like vmware)

    - found the virtual disk image at: C:\Users\Edward\VirtualBox VMs\Ubuntu\Ubuntu.vdi

    - copying it over to external drive

    - creating new machine

        - when adding the virtual drive on F:, it says that it can't read it, but then I continued and it worked

        - renaming to Ubuntu_base001.vdi to see if I can still load it

        - (you can change the file, file, global...)

        - discarded saved state from first machine

        - two machines have the same drive, testing if I can change one and it changes the other

            - first machine made file, turned off

- when I tried to take a screenshot, it said "failed to create":

                - getting the update to 4.1.16

                - it installed a number of devices (usb etc.)

                - said I had an old version of virtualbox extension pack and installed, quick

                - started machine 1 again

                - got error again:

                    - Failed to create a snapshot of the virtual machine Ubuntu.

                - starting as admin

                - posted question on the snapshot issue

- tried renaming the hard drive and using it on the same machine but you cannot because they have guids, even after I deleted the first:

- creating a new machine and trying to use the renamed drive from another machine, doesn't work:

- trying to use the drive on another machine, no, doesn't work:

        - zipping whole machine and moving it

            - renamed drive back to original and started ubuntu1, worked

            - zipping whole vm directory (C:\Users\Edward\VirtualBox VMs\Ubuntu), interseting: zipped all files including 3GB down to 1GB zip

                - copied, extracting...

- interesting, even though I deleted the disk, just because it was open on the machine, it says it cannot add one with the same UUID

                - ok, went into the virtual media manager and deleted it

                - did a copy virtual disk, created it

                    - started copied machine and it says it doesn't have usb 2.0 controller

                        - tried to install extension pack but got error "exptected 4.0 got 4.1" (ok, just downloaded wrong one, installing was easy, from website)

                        - nice, it copied fine

        - so: ubuntu machines are able to be created and copied

            - took a snapshot on the second machine and it worked

            - installing guest additions (ran autorun.sh), installed, made two shared folders, one a plain name, and one at /home/edward/test222, rebooting,

        - creating instructions for creating new Ubuntu machines:

            - trying to get two ubuntu machines running one

- right click, clone, then:

                - full clone

- takes about 3 minutes to clone

        - how to create a new ubuntu machine    

            - unzip file on external drive

            - copy the machines directory to hard drive

            - start machine

            - use this machine to clone other machines and rename

        - NEXT: Create and store win7 machine, done

        - NEXT: Create and store winxp machine