Posted by Derek@TheDailyLinux »
64 Comments »Update on 27 July 2011:
The VM cloning tool is now built into the GUI as of VirtualBox 4.1. See the changelog:
VirtualBox 4.1.0 (released 2011-07-19)
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:
Support for cloning of VMs (bug #5853, see the manual for more information): full clones can be created through the GUI and VBoxManage, linked clones only through VBoxManage
GUI: enhanced wizard for creating new virtual disks
GUI: new wizard for copying virtual disks
...
Original Post:
First of all, these are the instructions for a VirtualBox installation on a Linux host. It may or may not be the same directory structure/commands for Windows or Mac OS X hosts.
Most people don’t realize that making a backup of a VirtualBox Machine (.vdi) is more complex than just copy/paste. If you do that, you’ll soon realize (when it’s too late) that it doesn’t work! This is the proper way to backup your VirtualBox Machine:
VBoxManage clonevdi source destination
Example:
VBoxManage clonevdi ~/.VirtualBox/VDI/WindowsXP.vdi ~/WindowsXP_Backup.vdi
NOTE: Although I’m not specifically sure, sometime after Version 2 of this software, the clonedvi command has been replaced with clonehd (see page 108 of the VirtualBox Manual), however, clonedvi will still work as they kept the backwards compatibility.
Then, wait for it to complete. It may take a while depending on the size of your .vdi file (or how much space you allocated towards your virtual machine).
What this actually does is create a new UUID (Universal Unique Identifier) for the cloned VM. This way, you won’t end up with a message similar to this:
A hard disk with UUID {4d749826-6a3f-43ff-90af-42618783bd3a} or with the
same properties (’/home/martin/.VirtualBox/VDI/test.vdi’) is already
registered.
Posted by Derek@TheDailyLinux »
36 Comments »Updated January 9th, 2008
This is a tutorial on how to get VirtualBox up and running on Fedora 8. If you haven’t yet, add yourself as a “sudoer” by visiting the tutorial this page. Also, this tutorial is for the 32-Bit version of VirtualBox, so you’ll have to customize a little more to get the 64-bit version running (as pointed out in the comments). Everything in the “code” sections should be copy/pasted/typed into the terminal. Right, let’s get to it:
1.) Get the VirtualBox 1.5.4 package from the VirtualBox website for Fedora 8 and install it.
wget http://www.virtualbox.org/download/1.5.4/VirtualBox-1.5.4_27034_fedora8-1.i586.rpm && sudo rpm -ivh VirtualBox-1.5.4_27034_fedora8-1.i586.rpm
2.) Get the kernel-devel package:
sudo yum install make automake autoconf gcc kernel-devel
3.) Run the setup file for VirtualBox:
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
4.) Add yourself to the “vboxusers” group (don’t forget the “-” dash!):
su -
usermod -G vboxusers -a username
exit
5.) Run, and enjoy!
VirtualBox
I would recommend disabling compiz if you have it running for VirtualBox. I’ve noticed that it [i]really[/i] slows things down (especially in fullscreen mode).
6.) To Get USB Support:
1 – create a new group called “usb”;
2 – locate file usbfs: in my case is /sys/bus/usb/drivers (I suggest to find the file with a usb device inserted;
3 – modify file /etc/fstab inserting a line containing the right path and the number corresponding the “usb” group :
none /sys/bus/usb/drivers usbfs devgid=503,devmode=664 0 0
4 – command mount -a;
5 – start VB and try…;
Source: Fedora Forums
7.) To Properly Backup the VirtualBox Machine (.vdi):
Please refer to my other page here:
How To: Properly Backup a VirtualBox Machine (.VDI)
8.) To Get Sound Working:
Highlight your virtual machine and click on the “Settings” button. Click on the “Sound” category, and then check the “Enable Sound” option. In the drop-down box, select “PulseAudio”. You should now have sound.
9.) To enlarge an already created VDI or Disk Image:
I plan on making this a little neater, but for right now, I wanted to share the information that I found via the virtualbox forums. A gentleman by the nickname of “gushy” posted these instructions:
- Create a new disk using Virtual Disk Manager (in VirtualBox goto File -> Virtual Disk Manager)
- download System Rescue CD
- set your current VM to have the new disk image as it’s second hard disk and the System Rescue CD iso file as it’s CD
- boot the vm from the CD
- at the command prompt type startx
- when X Windows starts, type gparted in the terminal that is open on screen
- in gparted select the windows partition and choose copy
- select the second hard disk
- right click on the representation of the disk and click paste
- gparted will prompt you for the size of the disk, drag the slider to the max size
- click apply
- wait …….
- when it’s done right click on the disk and choose Manage Flags, and select Boot
- exit gparted and power off the VM
- change the VM settings to only have one disk (the new bigger disk) and deselect the iso as the CD.
- boot the VM into your windows install on it’s new bigger disk!
Original post is located in this thread. And, if your experience was anything like mine, your windows virtual machine will perform a disk check when rebooting for the first time on the larger disk.
Posted by Derek@TheDailyLinux »
5 Comments » The Unofficial Fedora FAQ:
http://www.fedorafaq.org/
A Huge Collection of Tutorials and How-To’s:
http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/91/26/
Automated Scripts for Multimedia, Drivers, and More!*
http://www.freewebs.com/dnmouse/autoinstall.htm
*If I may suggest, when I used the script, it really messed up my repositories and such, so I had to install Fedora 8 again and start from ground-up. Use the my-guides link instead to get multimedia and the such.
Misc and My Own Guides:
VirtualBox :
I put together a tutorial on how to get VirtualBox running. It’s located here:
http://sendderek.wordpress.com/2007/11/18/how-to-install-virtualbox-on-fedora-8-werewolf/
Turn Fedora 8 into your own web server:
If you’re interested, I’ve put together a tutorial on how I setup my Fedora 8 box to run my own website/server. Follow this link.
Sessions Menu Shortcut:
I wanted to simply add pidgin to a list of startup programs and I couldn’t find the “Sessions” link in the System menu like I was familiar to, so I added a new menu item using the Menu Editor called “Sessions” with the command “gnome-sessions-properties”.
Avant Window Navigator:
This is proving to be a tougher one to install. The main program is easy to install by just using “yum install avant-window-navigator” but “awn-core-applets” are more difficult because of a dependency problem with libwnck-1.so.18 (error message is “Missing Dependency: libwnck-1.so.18 is needed by package awn”). I havn’t figured out the dependency problem yet, but here’s a guide that might help:
http://wiki.awn-project.org/index.php?title=DistributionGuides
Sound in Flash Applications (Like YouTube):
This seems to be a pretty random problem, but the solution is easy. Just install the “libflashsupport” package. This is also documented in my other post “How to Fix the No Sound Issue in Firefox“.
Command Line (CLI) Auto Complete:
In fedora, I missed having the auto complete feature for when I wanted to run a command like “yum install package”. By installing the “bash-completion” package, I’m now able to type tab and it will finish the rest of the command for me (“yum ins[tab] pack[tab]“).
The package “bash-completion” can be found here:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/bashcompletion/20101/url_rpm/bash-completion-20060301-1.noarch.rpm
You may or may not need to run this command:
. /etc/bash_completion
Getting the Good Repositories:
The livna and kirov repositories have a ton of goodies in them.
Kirov:
su -
%yourrootpassword%
cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
wget http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~admiller/repo/pub/kirov.repo
rpm --import http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~admiller/repo/pub/RPM-GPG-KEY-Kirov
Livna:
wget http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm && sudo install livna-release-8.rpm
Get dvd-slideshow for Fedora 8:
I really had to search for this one while trying to install mandvd and manslide. I found it here on SourceForge.net named dvd-slideshow-0.8.0-1.noarch.rpm