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VirtualBox

VirtualBox is virtualizer for x86 hardware. I run it to create a virtual development environment where I can run multiple virtual servers that mimic a live environment.

VirtualBox is currently owned and developed by Sun Microsystems. There is an open-source version that has some limitations, and a "Personal Use and Evaluation" binary distribution.

Typical application:

I want to clone a current server so that I can work out the best method to update/modify/replace it.

Copy the file system (yes, I know this will create a filesystem with many errors because I am slowly copying the disk, but this is a demo!)

On the destination computer start netcat listening and pipe the output into dd

$ nc -l 7777 | dd of=hda.img bs=512

On the source computer copy the disk and pipe it into netcat

$ sudo dd if=/dev/hda bs=512 | /usr/sbin/nc destination-computer 7777

Wait for the disk to be copied.

Use VBoxManage to convert the raw disk image into a VirtualBox VDI file

$ VBoxManage convertdd hda.img hda.vdi

Create a new VirtualBox host similar to the source computer and point it at the newly created VDI file. It might be worth remembering that the new host will have the same IP addresses as the source computer so you might want to do host-only networking until you can alter the IP addresses in your running host.

Start the new VirtualBox host and glory in your success.

VirtualBox is mentioned on: MailServer:Dspam