Alexandru's E-Desk

A new feature in VirtualBox 3.1 is the ability to take a snapshot of a VM.
Each snapshot saves the state of the VM and you’re able to go back to it, just like version control.
This means that if you go back to a snapshot, you will lose all the changes you made after the snapshot.
Snapshots can be taken while the VM is running, so you can take a snapshot before installing a new program to play around with.
If something goes wrong with the installation, just start the snapshot and you’re back in the game.
A snapshot does not create a separate VM, so you’re still using the original VM, just modifying what’s on it.
Remember that if you go back to a snapshot, all the changes you made since taking the snapshot will be lost, so before going back, take another snapshot of the current state.
Now for the practice part.

The scenario is this: you have a fresh install of ubuntu on a VM called vbuntu.
You want to install something on it, but want to create a snapshot in case something goes wrong.

Look at the previous posts to see how to create the initial VM.
Once that is done, this is how you create a snapshot of the original VM called vbuntu, and call the snapshot initial_install

user@server:~$ VBoxManage snapshot vbuntu take initial_install

Then you do your install. If something goes wrong, you want to go back to the initial_install snapshot, here’s how to

user@server:~$ VBoxManage snapshot vbuntu restore initial_install

If your install goes well and want to create another snapshot before you install another program, you should take another snapshot, like above.

For more information about VirtualBox 3.1 snapshots check out the VirtualBox site.

Tags: Linux, new feature, snapshot, Ubuntu, virtualbox, vm

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 22:16 and is filed under Ubuntu, VirtualBox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.