Clicking "Install to Hard Drive" does nothing (running CentOS LiveCD in VirtualBox)
 

OK, this is my first experience running Virtual Box, so I bet this ends up being something stupid (apologies in advance).

I am on a Windows 7 machine, 6 cores, 3.2GHz, 8GB. My Virtual Box 4.2.18 set up went very smooth. I gave it the default 512 MB, a 15+ GB dynamic vdi, gave it the Start, pointed it to my CentOS-6.4-i386-LiveDVD.iso which was mounted on Windows as K: and CentOS came up. I was able to bring up Firefox and browse the Web, the Terminal and do a top and df -h. So I then double clicked on the "Install to Hard Drive" and nothing happened (other than the Virtual Box hard drive and CD icons blinking once). I did a tail -f /var/log/messages and got setenforce notices with livedvd dbus avc and then "Reloaded configuration".

Hopefully this thread will serve as an aid to some future person who happens to make the same mistake.

OK, I found a work-around (though alternate and quicker solutions are still welcome).

I trashed the original Virtual Box machine, rebuilt a new one the same as described in my original post, but then when starting it I used a different CentOS, namely CentOS-6.4-i386-minimal.iso. Installing that brought me to a raw command prompt, so I logged on as root and found I couldn't get to the Web, so I followed some Google advice to change the VM Network settings to Bridged Adaptor, reboot and edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to set-up static IP, edit /etc/resolv.conf with DNS info, and do a service network restart. Finally I used yum -y groupinstall "Desktop" "Desktop Platform" "X Window System" "Fonts" "Internet Browser" and after it installed the hundreds of packages changed /etc/inittab to come up in GUI mode. I also added a non-root user. After another reboot all was great, Firefox working.

In the end I got the same place as I was at hours ago with the Live DVD ISO, but now it's installed and not running live.

Centos minimal ISOs give you exactly what the name suggests: a minimal install. You approach wasn't wrong in case you want to start off with a core system and install only the services and programs you really need.
In case you want to have all the fancy bits installed you probably want to start with the normal standard install ISO. This usually works straight away even in virtualized environments (provided you choose the right options in anaconda or the install menu).

Thanks dt64 for replying.

Yes, I wasn't really surprised after installing "minimal" that I would have to work my way up to having network access and then the GUI. That was even educational/good practice. What I was surprised at was that I had gotten to the same point earlier (fully functional CentOS with Firefox access to the Web without me even having to do anything) except that it was the LiveCD. I had chosen the LiveCD install for the same reason anyone does for a new real machine, to make sure it would work to some degree (and since I was a newb to Virtualization that seemed to make sense). But then I had trouble going from Live mode to installing on the "drive" (the vdi). So I posted the question here and then later realized I should have tried a non-Live alternative, which I then did.

No big deal, I was just not sure what I was missing. If I wanted to start from scratch again I could try going with the non-Live full install (presumably CentOS-6.4-i386-bin-DVD1.iso). I don't think I will do that just for the sake of it, but if anyone replies to this thread and asks me to I will give it a shot.