FORAY
DEVELOPER FORAY: get a system going for having a library of ubuntu and win7 machines in virtualbox | 4.5
added on May 27, 2012 | permalink
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
start:
continue: