| 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 quickly produce a second virtual
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| 9 | machine with the same OS setup. However, you should <i>only</i> make copies of virtual disk
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| 10 | images using the utility supplied with <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/>. See
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| 11 | <xref href="vboxmanage-clonemedium.dita"/>. This is because <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> assigns a UUID to
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| 12 | each disk image, which is also stored inside the image, and <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> will refuse
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| 13 | to work with two images that use the same number. If you do accidentally try to reimport a
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| 14 | disk image which you copied normally, you can make a second copy using the
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| 15 | <userinput>VBoxManage clonevm</userinput> command and import that instead.
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| 16 | </p>
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| 17 | <p>
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| 18 | Note that Linux distributions identify the boot hard disk from the
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| 19 | ID of the drive. The ID <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> reports for a drive is
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| 20 | determined from the UUID of the virtual disk image. So if you
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| 21 | clone a disk image and try to boot the copied image the guest
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| 22 | might not be able to determine its own boot disk as the UUID
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| 23 | changed. In this case you have to adapt the disk ID in your boot
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| 24 | loader script, for example
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| 25 | <filepath>/boot/grub/menu.lst</filepath>. The disk ID looks like
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| 26 | the following:
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| 27 | </p>
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| 28 | <pre xml:space="preserve">scsi-SATA_VBOX_HARDDISK_VB5cfdb1e2-c251e503</pre>
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| 29 | <p>
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| 30 | The ID for the copied image can be determined as follows:
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| 31 | </p>
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| 32 | <pre xml:space="preserve">hdparm -i /dev/sda</pre>
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| 33 | </body>
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| 34 |
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| 35 | </topic>
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