Sven Jacobs wrote: > The installation went smoothly on Windows XP and Linux. However when I > first created a virtual machine I recognized an architectural difference > of VirtualBox compared to VMware which - in my opinion - is > counterproductive for a virtualization application: > > 1) Virtual machines need to be placed at a specific location
Formally, virtual machines can be placed at any location but in fact they need to be registered from there first (or created there) in order to be used. However, there is currently no UI to do so other than VBoxManage. > 2) Virtual machines are separated over two directories (Machines and VDI) > > While the second point also yields advantages (using the same disk image > for several machines) both points are hindering for my concern: the > portability of virtual machines. One of the greatest advantage of > virtual machines is the independence of the guest system to the host > system. I usually store my virtual machines on an USB medium, take them > along and use them on different computers where the virtualization > application is installed. The problem with VirtualBox is that it cannot > open a VM from *any* location. I have to copy them to the correct path > or change the path in the configuration dialog accordingly first. If I > change the path where VirtualBox is looking for VMs another problem is > that this path may change (e.g. another drive letter on Windows) if the > VMs are placed on a portable medium. > > I know it's possible to import a VM via "VBoxManage registervm" but > asides the restrictions of this command (quote from the manual: "it may > not have any hard or removable disks attached") this is not very "plug & > play". Your concern is clear enough. > My researches also revealed that a VM which has been created in Windows > can not be used in Linux and vice versa without modifying the > configuration files first (absolute paths, version property of the > <VirtualBox> root tag). The fact that all disk images are managed in the > users VirtualBox.xml file is another problem for portable VMs. Provided that you have everything (machines, VDIs) created under the .VirtualBox directory (which is the default behavior), all paths in configuration files will be relative to that directory, so you can effectively move this whole directory to your home directory on a different machine (or to an arbitrary directory which you should then set in the VBOX_USER_HOME environment variable prior to starting any frontend for the first time). This will, as you already noticed, not work if the host platforms differ. We have some host-specific options like network settings or audio settings that will simply not work (or will not have any meaning) in a different host OS), this is why configuration files were initially made platform-dependent. Anyway, thank you for your proposal, the portability feature (aka import/export) is a planned enhancement and is currently in development. This: > 1) Plug in a portable device > 2) Open a VM from the portable device > 3) Use it! will be one of the possibilities it will bring I think. -- Dmitry A. Kuminov _______________________________________________ vbox-users mailing list [email protected] http://vbox.innotek.de/mailman/listinfo/vbox-users
