I want to create a new vm starting from an existing virtualbox vm.
Can I just copy and paste and rename the existing one?
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Sign up to join this communityNo, Virtualbox will not allow you to register two VDI files with the same UUID.
Cannot register the hard disk '/home/lee/fedora-10-x86-1.vdi' with UUID {06f39a14-97e6-478c-93b9-0ade6dba48d8} because a hard disk '/home/lee/fedora-10-x86-1.vdi' with UUID {06f39a14-97e6-478c-93b9-0ade6dba48d8} already exists in the media registry ('/home/lee/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml').
You will need to clone the VDI file, this copies the original VDI file and assigns a new UUID.
From the gui:
Shutdown the VM and hit 'Ctrl+Shift+C' or click the 'clone' button. (It looks like a sheep.)
Windows:
VBoxManage.exe clonevdi "<Full_path_to_org_vdi>" "<Full_path_to_new_vdi>"
Linux:
VBoxManage clonevdi <Full_path_to_org_vdi> <Full_path_to_new_vdi>
I found a tutorial here describing the process.
vboxmanage internalcommands sethduuid <FULL_PATH_TO_VDI>
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I have created a simple script to clone a VirtualBox machine. It can create a clone from any snapshot. See my blog post where you can download the script.