Clone or Copy a VirtualBox Virtual Disk

Clone or Copy a VirtualBox Virtual Disk

Published by Nick Heppleston on Wednesday, 17th June 2009 in VirtualBox and Virtualisation. 7 Comments

As a virtual machine environment user, I regularly create ‘base’ images of machines that I can reuse – a base Windows Server 2003 environment, or SQL Server 2005 environment for example. That way, when I need a new machine, I can simply create a copy of the virtual disk and add any additional software I need, saving myself valuable time creating new virtual environments.

With VMWare’s various offerings, copying a virtual disk is easy: copy the disk in Windows Explorer and add it to a newly created VM; VMWare will detect that the disk was a copy and create a new unique identifier (UUID) for the disk before adding it to the VM. Easy and painless. Not so with VirtualBox.

With VirtualBox, copying a virtual disk is a bit of a pain. If you copy the disk in Windows Explorer and try and use it in a new VM, VirtualBox will have a hissy fit and display the error shown below. A bit of a ‘wordy’ way to say that it already knows about this disk, don’t you think?

The publicised way around this is to use the command-line VBoxManage CloneHd tool, however there is another – secret and undocumented – way to clone a disk: the setvdiuuid tool. Lets look at these two methods in detail.

Cloning a Virtual Disk – The ‘Supported’ Method

Cloning a disk is (IMHO) a clunky and Unix-y type way of creating a duplicate disk. We need to invoke the CloneHd command of the VBoxManage tool, supplying the disk to clone and the name of the new ‘cloned’ disk. In its simplest form, you would do something like this at the command-line:

cd C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox

VBoxManage clonehd "DiskToClone.vdi" "ClonedDisk.vdi"

The VBoxManage tool will chug away and clone the disk for you, creating a new UUID in the process:

The cloned disk can now be used on a new VM without incurring the ‘I already know about this disk’ error.

Copying a Disk – The ‘Unsupported’ Method

The unsupported method is to copy the disk like you copy a normal file and then set a diferent uuid

using setvdiuuid.

Setvdiuuid is an undocumented option available in VBoxManage – the setvdiuuid command. As the command help states: ‘This is a development tool and shall only be used to analyse problems. It is completely unsupported and will change in incompatible ways without warning’. Because of this, let me add a little disclaimer: I don’t accept any responsibility if you completely destroy your VM using this procedure. Having said that, it appears to work without issue, so I’m more than happy to use it myself – just make sure that you take a backup of you virtual disk before using it if necessary.

To use the tool, simply create a copy of the virtual disk’s VDI file in Windows Explorer; open the Windows command-line and issue the setvdiuuid command for the newly copied disk:

cd C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox

VBoxManage internalcommands setvdiuuid "CopiedDisk.vdi"

The tool will create a new UUID and assign it to the disk:

The new copied disk can now be used on a new VM without incurring the ‘I already know about this disk’ error.

This was shown for windows but also works on linux, you just need to change cd C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox to the correct location on linux.

Based On: http://www.modhul.com/2009/06/17/how-to-clone-or-copy-a-virtualbox-virtual-disk/

Scp - Secure File Transfer (using ssh) Between UNIX Machines

Scp - Secure File Transfer (using ssh) between UNIX machines

Introduction and setup

Scp is a utility which allows files to be copied between machines. Scp is an updated version of an older utility named Rcp. It works the same, except that information (including the password used to log in) is encrypted. Also, if you have set up your .shosts file to allow you to ssh between machines without using a password as described in help on setting up your .shosts file, you will be able to scp files between machines without entering your password.
Usage of the Scp Command



The general form of the command is:

$ scp source-specification destination-specification

where source-specification indicates which file or directory is to be copied, and destination-specification indicates where the copied material is to be placed.

Either the source or the destination may be on the remote machine; i.e., you may copy files or directories into the account on the remote system OR copy them from the account on the remote system into the account you are logged into.



Example:

$ scp myfile xyz@sdcc7:myfile


To copy a directory, use the -r (recursive) option. Example:

$ scp -r mydir xyz@sdcc7:mydir



File Specification Formats

The format for the remote specification (source or destination) is:

user@machine:filename

where filename is the name (path) of the file or directory relative to the home (login) directory on the remote system.



The format for file specification on the local system is just:

filename


where fname is the name (path) relative to the current working directory on that system.
How scp is similar to cp

Just like the cp command, scp will overwrite an existing destination file. In addition, if the destination is an existing directory, the copied material will be placed beneath the directory.
Examples of remote file copies

1. While logged into xyz on sdcc7, copy file "letter" into file "application" in remote account abc on sdcc3:

$ scp letter abc@sdcc3:application


2. While logged into abc on sdcc3, copy file "foo" from remote account xyz on sdcc7 into filename "bar" in abc:

$ scp xyz@sdcc7:foo bar


3. While logged into account xyz on sdcc7, copy file "garfield" from subdirectory "comix" into filename "fatcat" in subdirectory "stuff" in remote account abc on sdcc3:

$ scp comix/garfield abc@sdcc3:stuff/fatcat


4. While logged into account abc on sdcc3, copy file "garfield" from subdirectory "comix" of account xyz on sdcc7 into subdirectory "stuff" with the same name "garfield":

$ scp xyz@sdcc7:comix/garfield stuff


5. While logged into account abc on sdcc3 , copy subdirectory "Section" into a new subdirectory called "Section" in existing subdirectory "Chapter" in account xyz on sdcc7:

$ scp -r Section xyz@sdcc7:Chapter


6. From account abc on sdcc3, copy entire account to ir123 on iacs5. This needs to be done from the parent directory of the account to be moved.

$ cd
$ cd ..
$ scp -r abc ir123@iacs5:abc



For more information about the scp (secure copy) command, check the on-line manual page for scp:

$ man scp