A VirtualBox's newbie here. I created a snapshot of a VM by using this command line:
VBoxManage snapshot VMName take BackupName
Then I used this to check:
VBoxManage showvminfo VMName
and I saw a snapshot was created with the name BackupName. I didn't find an "actual" snapshot BackupName, I found a file filename.sav in SnapShots folder.
My intention was to create a snapshot of this VM, copy it to another host machine and restore it there. Since I couldn't find the "snapshot" BackupName, so I copied sav file to new host and used this command:
VBoxManage adoptsate filename.sav
But it didn't work. Can anyone help me how to copy that "snapshot" and restore it in a new host. Thanks a lot
First, get a list of the Virtual Machines installed on your host at the command line:
vboxmanage list vms
Sample Output
"UbuntuVM" {77743eca-e338-471c-b824-60c5c5c22b6f}
"Windows XP SP3" {3818afc4-189d-4441-8f35-07284c930a4b}
"Windows XP SP3 Clone" {79b40316-225a-43a1-9ddf-22a51c280d4e}
Find the one you want to export to a different host, and export to a file called Ubuntu.ova like this:
vboxmanage export UbuntuVM -o Ubuntu.ova
Related
I have a dual-boot setup with Windows 10 and Kubuntu 18. Following instructions found from here and there I managed to get the Windows to run as guest in Kubuntu host as a VM using VirtualBox.
sudo usermod -a -G disk $USER
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename "/path/to/vm/win10.vmdk" -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,3,4 -relative
The first line is to avoid running VirtualBox as superuser.
When I boot the VM, I briefly see an error message
Boot Failed. EFI DVD/CDROM
SystemBootOrder not found. Initializing defaults.
Creating boot entry "Boot0003" with label "ubuntu" for file "\EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi"
and then end up in grub shell. Now, when I run the commands
insmod chain
set root=(hd0,gpt1)
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
boot
Windows boots and works just fine but entering these every time is not exactly smooth workflow. Any idea how to permanently fix this?
Please note that I'd still like to be able to physically boot into both OS's.
Thanks,
I had the same problem. I fixed it, but then updated my kernel and so grub re-un-fixed it for me! Figuring it out for the second time was quicker, but I figured it'd be even quicker next time to find my answer on StackOverflow!
My grub.cfg file in /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu looked like this:
search.fs_uuid 47d6233f-c0ae-4f89-bf18-184452eac803 root hd0,gpt6
set prefix=($root)'/boot/grub'
configfile $prefix/grub.cfg
Because we have setup the VirtualBox vmdk file with only the selected partitions for Windows to work, the search.fs_uuid command was failing, $root was empty and so grub can't find $prefix/grub.cfg (/boot/grub/grub.cfg in my linux rootfs which is on sda6==gpt6)
I automated it by changing the EFI grub.cfg, note my EFI System partition is 2 not 1 as in your example:
search.fs_uuid 47d6233f-c0ae-4f89-bf18-184452eac803 root hd0,gpt6
set prefix=($root)'/boot/grub'
if [ -f $prefix/grub.cfg ]
then
configfile $prefix/grub.cfg
else
insmod chain
set root=(hd0,gpt2)
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
boot
fi
Now if grub can find the cfg file it will give me the menu to select the boot as before, but if it can't - when I'm in VirtualBox - it'll just boot straight into Win10.
Hope this helps!
I am curious to find out why packer is failing to get ssh access on an ESXi server. The build works just fine for vmware_fusion locally.
As JSON does not seem to display nicely directly here on SF - a link to a gist with the builder configuration: https://gist.github.com/geoHeil/5acf06cb0f3afadfa347d437c2695a7c
When running
packer build -var-file variables.json -only=vmwarevmwareRemote template.json
the kickstart file is loaded, configured and installed. However, in the case of ESXi as the builder the build seems to be stuck on waiting for SSH to become available.
I noticed in the logs that:
/var/log/auth.log
2017-02-08T17:33:20Z sshd[94210]: User 'root' running command 'esxcli --formatter csv network vm list\n'
2017-02-08T17:33:25Z sshd[94210]: User 'root' running command 'esxcli --formatter csv network vm list\n'
displays a lot of the same commands.
Executing this command manually shows
esxcli --formatter csv network vm list
Name,Networks,NumPorts,WorldID,
ubunu-test,"VM Network,",1,87986,
someOther,"VM Network,",1,84833,
What could be wrong here?
edit
packer version is latest 0.12.2, esxi 6.5
edit2
when applying the suggestion of setting a network the same problem persists. But now I see 2 commands in the logs
[root#vm-bd-dev:/var/log] tail -f auth.log
2017-02-09T09:05:56Z sshd[111376]: User 'root' running command 'esxcli --formatter csv network vm list\n'
2017-02-09T09:05:56Z sshd[111376]: User 'root' running command 'esxcli --formatter csv network vm port list -w 111433\n'
The second (new) one has the following output:
ActiveFilters,DVPortID,IPAddress,MACAddress,PortID,Portgroup,TeamUplink,UplinkPortID,vSwitch,
,,0.0.0.0,00:0c:29:47:d5:3d,33554450,VM Network,vmnic2,33554437,vSwitch0,
You probably need some more vmx_data settings for the network, something like:
"vmx_data": {
"ethernet0.networkName": "VM Network",
"ethernet0.present": "true",
"ethernet0.virtualDev": "vmxnet3",
"ethernet0.startConnected": "true",
"ethernet0.addressType": "generated"
}
Switching the network interface to something not hard coded like
network --bootproto=dhcp --ipv6=auto --activate
solved the problem for me.
Apparently different interfaces (no eth0) were available on ESXi.
I want to deploy a new VM with my vmdk file in vcenter environment from CLI. So ssh to esx server is not an option. Is there any way I can do this .I know there is some vmware perl sdk but I could not find exactly what I need to get this working. I know The same operation is possible from GUI, but I need to make it automated and also scale up so gui is not an option for me.
Can you please be more specific? This for a Linux or Windows CLI?
The simplest way to do this is via PowerCLI: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=PCLI550&productId=352
To clone from an existing VM, the command would be:
$vm2 = New-VM -Name VM2 -VM VM1 -Datastore $datastore -VMHost $host
Also, when you say you want to create from VMDK, is the VMDK already on the target datastore? Do you need to import the VMDK first?
Normally, when you create a VM, you can either create a new "blank" VM or you can clone from an existing VM. If you have a VMDK you want to use, you would create an empty VM and then attach the VMDK. This assumes that you already have the VMDK in question loaded into a datastore that the host can access.
Im running ubuntu 14.04 with vbox . In this machine I compiled and run kernel 3.14 which I choose from the grub menu when ubuntu load on vbox.
The host also run on ubuntu 14.04.
I wanted to ask - is there a way to load the guest ubuntu into specific kernel with a command on shell?
I can start running a vm on vbox trough command line with this command :
VBoxManage startvm ubuservloc --type headless
but its not quite exactly what I need.
I don't know of any way to directly communicate from the host to the guest's GRUB, but there are several indirect ways you could go:
mount the /boot filesystem from the host and drop a file there that is read by the guest's grub.cfg.
VBoxManage controlvm keyboardputscancode to type a hotkey which is assigned to the correct kernel in GRUB (shortly after starting the VM)
Configure GRUB to listen to a (virtual) serial port and select the kernel by writing to that file
In case a second reboot is acceptable (first boot into default kernel and then reboot into desired kernel) there are also several ways (you can use the grub-set-default command from guest to choose your desired kernel and issue a reboot). Some I can think of here:
VBoxManage guestcontrol run to call a shell script from host in the guest (after guest additions have been loaded)
VBoxManage guestproperty to set a property from host and VBoxControl guestproperty to read it from an init script and decide from there
Just SSH into the guest and reboot from there :D
Obviously, if you always want to boot that kernel, why not make it default? And in case always you want to alternately boot two different kernels, you can also set the default for next boot to another one direclty from grub.cfg.
Is there any way to restore a snapshot from inside a VBox guest machine?
I have a Windows machine that hosts numerous machines. Currently we are working with something using a Ubuntu guest and it is really painful to have to keep switching machines just to revert a snapshot.
What I had in mind is setting the machine to a "base" state and every time I want to go to that I just type some command like:
revertbase
Than the machine would restart in the previous snapshot and I would just need to restart ssh to continue.
You cannot snapshot a running machine, you have to freeze it before, so my guess is that the host itself cannot do that.
In the host machine, from command line you can do this using VBoxManage.
The file is located in
Program Files/Oracle/VirtualBox/VBoxManage.exe
and is used as a command-line interface with VirtualBox.
Using the command:
VBoxManage snapshot "MachineName" take SnapShotName
Them after that:
VBoxManage snapshot "MachineName" discardcurrent -state
To return to the last state, for more read the text bellow, to have easy acess to VBoxManage add it to your path:
PATH=%PATH%;c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox
Taken from: http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/systems-management/8224-secrets-for-controlling-virtualbox-from-the-command-line
Managing snapshots
One of the most useful feature of virtualization software is its ability to take snapshots of VMs. It's always a good idea to take a snapshot of a VM before making changes to it. Snapshots help on the hardware level to recover a system that has been rendered unusable due to changes to the hardware configuration, and on the software level they protect against data loss due to accidental deletion or virus.
Taking a snapshot from the VirtualBox CLI is child's play. VBoxManage snapshot "Fedora" take snap1-stable-system takes the snapshot of a stable Fedora VM when everything is working perfectly. Saving a snapshot might take some time, depending on the VM and the resources on the host. To make sure you don't make changes to a system while a snapshot is being taken, VirtualBox grays out the whole VM interface, and you cannot use it until the snapshot has been saved.
With a stable snapshot in hand, go ahead and play with the system. If you get in trouble and your machine won't boot or starts behaving abnormally, you can revert to the snapshot of the stable machine. To do this, first power off the VM with VBoxManage controlvm "Fedora" poweroff, then revert to last snapshot with VBoxManage snapshot "Fedora" discardcurrent -state. If you have multiple snapshots, you can revert to the last but one snapshot with the -all switch instead of -state.
Of course when you revert to an older state, all the changes you made since that snapshot was taken are lost, including all configuration changes and changes to old and new files. You can work around this by specifying that your data should be stored on a "writethrough" disk, which behaves like a normal disk but isn't affected by snapshots. Put another way, when you take a snapshot, VirtualBox ignores the writethrough disk. You can store all your important data and files or your complete /home directory on that disk.
 
To add a writethrough disk, use the -type writethough option when creating a new disk with createvdi. You can also change a disk you created earlier and make it writethrough. To do so, first unattach it from the VM with VBoxManage modifyvm "Fedora" -hdb none, and then unregister it with VBoxManage unregisterimage disk fourgig (using the name of the disk on your system in place of fourgig). Now register it back again but as a writethrough disk with VBoxManage registerimage disk "fourgig" -type writethrough. Finally, attach it back to the VM using VBoxManage modifyvm "Fedora" -hdb fourgig.
Now you can safely save data on this disk, and no matter what state the VM is in, the data will always be safe. But remember not to revert back to a state that was saved before this disk was created; if you do, VirtualBox will simply delete the disk, becase it didn't exist in that state. Also, VirtualBox doesn't currently let you take a snapshot of a VM that has a writethrough disk attached, so you have to unattach a writethough disk before saving the state of the VM and then reattach it. I hope in upcoming VirtualBox versions the presence of a writethrough disk will have no influence on the snapshot process.
An updated answer. You still can't do it from the guest directly.
You could trigger the host to restart the guest by means of a shared drive/folder and a script running on the host which will reload the guest when a shared file is updated.
Included is my windows script to restart the guest. The commands as given by Canesin did not work for me. I have the following in a CMD file.
PATH=%PATH%;c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox
vboxmanage controlvm "DEMO" poweroff
timeout /t 10
vboxmanage snapshot "DEMO" restorecurrent
timeout /t 10
vboxmanage startvm "DEMO"