Christopher Juckins

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virtualbox_general_notes

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VirtualBox General Notes

How to resize a Virtual Drive

  • The following was tested with VBox 5.1.26
  • Shutdown the VM you want to resize
  • Navigate to the .vdi file you want to resize
  • Make a backup copy of the .vdi file
  • Run a command like this (example for 30GB drive)
# VBoxManage modifyhd /path/to/file.vdi --resize 30000

Note, if you have a vmdk file you need to follow this (see this link) and then update the UUID following this link or navigating to $HOME/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml and updating the information there (make a backup first):

# VBoxManage clonehd "source.vmdk" "cloned.vdi" --format vdi
# VBoxManage modifyhd "cloned.vdi" --resize 51200
# mv source.vmdksource.vmdk.BAK 
# VBoxManage clonehd "cloned.vdi" "source.vmdk" --format vmdk

Possible mouse unresponsiveness issue in 5.1.18 https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=79034

Running in Headless Mode

# List virtual machines
VBoxManage list vms
"MyVM" {e4b0c92c-4301-4a7d-8af8-fe02fed00451}

# Start VM in headless mode
VBoxManage startvm MyVM –type headless

# Power off VM
VBoxManage controlvm MyVM poweroff

February 2015

Updated October 2016 for wodim issues

Installing Guest Additions in run-level 3 on CENTOS6 and CENTOS7:

  • First, go to the VirtualBox window that is running the guest machine and choose Devices > Insert Guest Additions CD Image
  • From a separate terminal window (via ssh) or in the VM window itself, su - root
  • yum install cdrecord
  • wodim –devices
    • (note the drive designation)
      • If that command fails on a CENTOS7 v7.2.1511 VirtualBox instance, try: wodim dev=/dev/sr0 –devices
      • If that succeeds, it should say something like 'VBOX' 'CD-ROM'
      • Or: wodim -prcap (although that doesn't seem to give you the info needed)
  • mkdir /media/cdrom
  • mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom
    • if you used "sr0" above, substitute sr0 for scd0 in the line above
  • cd /media/cdrom
  • Then run Linux version of script
    • Ex: sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
  • When done, cd / and eject and reboot
virtualbox_general_notes.1515597741.txt.gz · Last modified: 2018/01/10 10:22 by juckins