| 1 | <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
|
|---|
| 2 | <!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
|
|---|
| 3 | <topic xml:lang="en-us" id="cloningvdis">
|
|---|
| 4 | <title>Cloning Disk Images</title>
|
|---|
| 5 |
|
|---|
| 6 | <body>
|
|---|
| 7 | <p>You can duplicate hard disk image files on the same host to quickly produce a second virtual machine with the same OS setup. However, you should <i>only</i> make copies of virtual disk images using the utility supplied with <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/>. See <xref href="../cli_topics/vboxmanage-clonemedium.dita"/>. This is because <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> assigns a UUID to each disk image, which is also stored inside the image, and <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> will refuse to work with two images that use the same number. If you do accidentally try to reimport a disk image which you copied normally, you can make a second copy using the <userinput>VBoxManage clonevm</userinput> command and import that instead. </p>
|
|---|
| 8 | <p>Note that Linux distributions identify the boot hard disk from the ID of the drive. The ID <ph
|
|---|
| 9 | conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> reports for a drive is determined from the UUID of the virtual
|
|---|
| 10 | disk image. So if you clone a disk image and try to boot the copied image the guest might not be able to determine
|
|---|
| 11 | its own boot disk as the UUID changed. In this case you have to adapt the disk ID in your boot loader script, for
|
|---|
| 12 | example <filepath>/boot/grub/menu.lst</filepath>. The disk ID looks like the following: </p>
|
|---|
| 13 | <pre xml:space="preserve">scsi-SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB5cfdb1e2-c251e503</pre>
|
|---|
| 14 | <p>The ID for the copied image can be determined as follows: </p>
|
|---|
| 15 | <pre xml:space="preserve">hdparm -i /dev/sda</pre>
|
|---|
| 16 | </body>
|
|---|
| 17 |
|
|---|
| 18 | </topic>
|
|---|
