Virtualbox Help required

ringo747 · 16 Nov 2011 at 13:38

I have moved a number of virtualbox VDIs to another machine. When I create a new machine and add the existing file hard drive file I get a blue screen in the VM as windows loads. This happens every time.

What on earth is going on here? I haven't a clue what to do.

Uhtred · 16 Nov 2011 at 13:45

Probably a change to the ACHI mode of the hard disk?

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch05.html

ringo747 · 16 Nov 2011 at 13:53

I think you aren't far off. I noticed that creating a new VM added the disk under the SATA section. I have just tried adding it as IDE and it is booting up now. Hopefully that works for the rest of them otherwise I'm stuffed.

Uhtred · 16 Nov 2011 at 13:56

hopefully that will do the trick. For future reference it might be better to export and import as an appliance, that will retain all your settings.

ringo747 · 16 Nov 2011 at 14:01

Will look into that. It is installing a load of new drivers now that the VM has booted. There definitely must be some changes in the latest version.

ringo747 · 19 Nov 2011 at 14:07

Can someone confirm if exporting VMs as an appliance is the best way to backup virtual machines? I will be storing these on an external HD so I can either copy the whole 'Virtualbox VMs' folder or else export all as appliances.

marc2003 · 19 Nov 2011 at 14:36

this all seems rather odd. i don't use virtualbox myself but moving a VM from one host to another should just work. it certainly does with VMware. even using VMs created in windows works just fine on a linux box. all config files and the virtual disks are stored in the same folder so portability is a doddle.

ringo747 · 19 Nov 2011 at 14:39

The blue screen issues above are sorted. It was more around exporting VMs for storage purposes. I could just copy over the .VDI files and then if I need them I can recreate a new VM and attach the disk file.

If you export to appliances in .ovf format then it generates a vmdk file. If you need to create a new VM you import the appliance and it restores all the settings.

I think virtualbox stores uid's for each virtual disk file so it could cause issues importing.

I just don't know whether I should export an appliance each time I want to backup or should I just copy over the VDI files?

marc2003 · 19 Nov 2011 at 14:45

even re-configuring the VM settings on each host sounds like a big hassle to me. surely these files should be portable across all platforms that support virtualbox itself? :confused:

ringo747 · 19 Nov 2011 at 14:50

I'm not sure if VMWare or anything else supports virtualbox VMs. I think you have to export to an appliance to be able to use with others.

It is only for my own use on laptop anyway so it's not totally critical.

marc2003 · 19 Nov 2011 at 14:59

i wasn't really suggesting that you changed. i'm just slightly bemused that virtualbox doesn't work like i'd expect it to. the key word here is virtual so the host OS/hardware should be irrelevant (apart from the obvious stuff like hardware VT for 64bit guests, number of cores, etc)

sorry for my entirely non-helpful posts.

if you can get the VDIs working on your 2 machines each having their own config files then that's good enough.

ringo747 · 19 Nov 2011 at 15:11

All I want to do really is copy the VMs to an external drive so that if for some reason they get knackered then I can copy in my backed up version and keep going. I reckon just copying over the whole Virtualbox VMs folder will be the easiest option.