In my opinion the feature "linked clone" is useless because we have no additional benefit from its current implementation. Now I am unable to delete the generated snapshot or to de-link the new VM. In my case I cloned an existing VM but used option "linked clone". I can trash the machine, shut it down, and when I reboot it, it’s spiffy clean.Īnd this brings me back to my original point: VirtualBox is great.I have the same problem too with VBox 4.3.12.
No worries about viruses, no problems installing some junk spyware that some customer thinks is a good screen-sharing tool, whatever. It’s magic, and it’s the nicest thing ever, especially for Windows. Presto-the folder is gone, but the VPN is still there. Now I’ll make a folder and put it on the desktop, and reboot again. But if I take a snapshot, and call it “VPN installed” or something like that, when I restart my VPN is still there.
#Virtualbox snapshot install#
Then I install VPN on that, and shut down. To illustrate this, let’s say I start a fresh machine from my base disk image. Whatever changes I made before I took a snapshot, are persisted across reboots. Snapshots are stored in a snapshot image file that doesn’t get reset. Only the most recent state (which is stored in a differencing image file) will be configured as auto-reset. Instead of turning off autoreset on the image, I just take a snapshot after shutting down. How can I do this? It turns out this is also not hard. I want a clean image, with the VPN installed, and every time I start the machine I want that minty-fresh just-installed nasty VPN feeling. If I don’t have them doing that, they eventually fill up with garbage.
#Virtualbox snapshot windows#
However, I actually like Windows machines to reset at boot. Now this machine will store its state across reboots. I’ll just set the differencing image not to reset at boot: VBoxManage modifyhd Machines/Windows_XP_VPN/Snapshots/ -autoreset false How can I do this? It’s actually pretty simple.
#Virtualbox snapshot full#
So this isn’t the full solution, actually, because the nasty VPN software I installed isn’t there after restart. If I boot up, save a file on the desktop, and restart, the file is gone. But what happens when I restart this machine, is that the differencing file gets emptied first. I can have lots of these images sharing the same base image file that usually ends up being multiple gigabytes, so sharing the base image file is a great way to save on disk space. If I shut down the machine and look at the image files, I’ll see one that’s oh, maybe a couple hundred megabytes. The special characteristic of this differencing image file is that it resets on boot. It doesn’t touch the base image file any modifications are made to a copy-on-write image file. I boot it up, make some changes, and when I shut it down, all the changes it’s made are stored in a differencing disk image file. After selecting this disk image, I just go through all the rest of the settings, finish the wizard, and I have my machine. I will create a new machine, call it Windows_XP_VPN, and select the Windows_XP.vdi file as its disk image. Let’s say I want an image with an annoying VPN installed. Now here comes the magic: you can create special-purpose machines that always revert to the fresh image when you boot them up. I have one set up with Service Pack 3, all the usual annoyances disabled, etc etc. Now you have a freshly installed Windows image on that file, which can serve as the base for lots and lots of machines. Substitute the name of your actual disk image file. Then set it immutable so it never changes again: VBoxManage modifyhd HardDisks/Windows_XP.vdi -type immutable You can then keep this image registered inside VirtualBox, but detached from any actual machines. You can do this by creating a machine, installing your operating system on it, then throwing away the machine and keeping the resulting disk image. One of the tricks I use a lot is to set up a bunch of VirtualBox instances with a common (shared) base disk image. Windows runs better inside VirtualBox than it does on bare hardware. It makes it so easy to run Windows when I need it for Windows-only software. Making Auto-Resetting VirtualBox Machines
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