How to automatically clone a VM?

Question

I run a Windows XP VM on an Ubuntu host machine version 14.04. I cloned 5 times the main VM. I am running a special software on the first VM. The software will damage the VM one day or an other. So That is why I automatically start one of the remaining 4 VM.

As the remaining VMs will be harmed by time, I wonder how could I generate a bash script on the host machine that will allow me to automatically clone a safe VM ?

`vboxmanage clonevm vm1 --name vm2` could be use to clone `vm1` to `vm2` - just needs something to check which vms are now harmed etc. — Wilf, Aug 12 '14 at 09:09
@Wilf Is really `vboxmanage clonevm vm1 --name vm2` all what I need ? Is it this simple ? Thank you. I do not need to check which VM is safe because I will let one VM not running at all and I will clone it once each 10 days. — , Aug 12 '14 at 09:13

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 12 '14 at 09:16

To just clone the VM vm1 (where vm1 is the name of the VM) to vm2, something like this will do:

vboxmanage clonevm vm1 --name vm2

For more information, run vboxmanage --help - clonevm can take varying options:

  clonevm                   <uuid|vmname>
                            [--snapshot <uuid>|<name>]
                            [--mode machine|machineandchildren|all]
                            [--options link|keepallmacs|keepnatmacs|
                                       keepdisknames]
                            [--name <name>]
                            [--groups <group>, ...]
                            [--basefolder <basefolder>]
                            [--uuid <uuid>]
                            [--register]

This could be done automatically in a script (e.g. checking mod/access times, assigned name based on date, gvfs variable, etc)

How to automatically clone a VM?

1 Answers1