Virtualbox Immutable Drive Problem

[madurham]

We have been using Virtualbox to provide an XP VM for computing lessons and it's been working brilliantly.

 

I've created a new VM to provide VS 2012 and a few other programs on a Win7 VM. This time Virtualbox doesn't seem to be immutable even when the GUI reports that it is. The only workaround I have found is to create a snapshot and push that out with the VM. The VM seems to boot from that everytime making it act like an immutable drive. It's a massive bellyache and I'd rather fix the root problem. Does anyone know what I've done to mess up immutable drives?

 

I used VBox 4.3.12 r93733 to make the VMs and the classroom machines are using 4.3.10 r93012. I'n my research people had this issue with 3.2 but it was working for my XP VM in 4.x.

[madurham]

I found the fix. I needed to put the following line in the batch file we use to launch the VM.

 

"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\vboxmanage.exe" modifyhd "c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VMs\ProgrammingVM\Snapshots\{0eb70cd9-520f-41fc-a707-18f75d3a7120}.vdi" --autoreset on

 

This makes sure changes to the differencing file, created when you set the drive to immutable, are discarded on shutdown. The GUID will be different for each VM.

 

When I make changes it looks like I have to manually start the machine with --autoreset off once otherwise it's still mutable. Weird.

[kennysarmy]

If it helps here are my notes:

 

1. Copy the folder Q:\Images\VirtualBox\sandbox to the new PC in the folder C:\ drive

2. Install VirtualBox but don’t run. J:\_admin software\Virtual Box\VirtualBox-4.2.16-86992-Win.exe accept all the defaults.

3. Go into "Computer Management" and create a group called "VBOXUSERS" and add "domain users" to it; this can be found in Step 35 of the section above. VBOX_USER_HOME = C:\sandbox\ then set permissions on C:\sandbox\ to modify for VBOXUSERS

4. Reboot

5. Open VirtualBox

6. Check preferences for default location; should be C:\sandbox

7. Choose option Machine Add - click file in C:\sandbox\

8. Activate Windows : Firstly turn on the network by going into "Settings" and then "Network" - enable the checkbox, and run the VM. Use the run command and enter slmgr.vbs /ato to activate.

9. Shutdown the VM

10. Go to "File" -> "Virtual Media Manager" and select the sandbox clone ".vdi" file and right click on it; select the "release" button and then "modify" - set the drive type to "Immutable".

11. You will then need to re-add the image to the sandbox; click on the "Settings" button -> "Storage" and then click on the "Controller: SATA" tab. You will see two buttons on the right edge of the selection, select the second button called "Add Hard-Drive" -> "Choose Existing Disk" once completed, navigate to the sandbox directory and click on the image file. This will attach the newly made immutable disk to the sandbox environment.

12. Then disable the network interface by unchecking the box detailed in stage 8.

 

13. Ensure that the VM management software is shutdown, and then go into CMD and change the directory to "Oracle" - once inside through directory through the command prompt use the command: "VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/Customizations noMenuBar,noStatusBar" to remove status and menu bars.

14. Open up the Oracle management software, and select "Settings" and then "General" - change the name of the sandbox from "Sandbox Clone" to "Sandbox"

15. Test as teacher and pupil