| 1 | <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
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| 2 | <!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
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| 3 | <topic xml:lang="en-us" id="cloningvdis">
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| 4 | <title>Cloning Disk Images</title>
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| 5 |
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| 6 | <body>
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| 7 | <p>
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| 8 | You can duplicate hard disk image files on the same host to
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| 9 | quickly produce a second virtual machine with the same OS setup.
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| 10 | However, you should <i>only</i> make copies of
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| 11 | virtual disk images using the utility supplied with
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| 12 | Oracle VM VirtualBox. See <xref href="man_VBoxManage-clonemedium.dita#vboxmanage-clonemedium"/>.
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| 13 | This is because Oracle VM VirtualBox assigns a UUID to each disk image,
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| 14 | which is also stored inside the image, and Oracle VM VirtualBox will
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| 15 | refuse to work with two images that use the same number. If you do
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| 16 | accidentally try to reimport a disk image which you copied
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| 17 | normally, you can make a second copy using the <userinput>VBoxManage
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| 18 | clonevm</userinput> command and import that instead.
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| 19 | </p>
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| 20 | <p>
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| 21 | Note that Linux distributions identify the boot hard disk from the
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| 22 | ID of the drive. The ID Oracle VM VirtualBox reports for a drive is
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| 23 | determined from the UUID of the virtual disk image. So if you
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| 24 | clone a disk image and try to boot the copied image the guest
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| 25 | might not be able to determine its own boot disk as the UUID
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| 26 | changed. In this case you have to adapt the disk ID in your boot
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| 27 | loader script, for example
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| 28 | <filepath>/boot/grub/menu.lst</filepath>. The disk ID looks like
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| 29 | the following:
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| 30 | </p>
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| 31 | <pre xml:space="preserve">scsi-SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB5cfdb1e2-c251e503</pre>
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| 32 | <p>
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| 33 | The ID for the copied image can be determined as follows:
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| 34 | </p>
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| 35 | <pre xml:space="preserve">hdparm -i /dev/sda</pre>
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| 36 | </body>
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| 37 |
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| 38 | </topic>
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