Using VirtualBox and OpenSolaris 2008.11 as a VM on a Vista Host

howard3005 · 12-16-2008, 02:15 AM

I was able to install OK and bring up my machine. I even thought that I had installed the VMadditions OK, but I seem to be having trouble saving my work. I can not figure out what "Save State" and "Snapshots" really do, and when I exit VirtualBox and come back in, or exit my VM and start it up again without exiting VirtualBox, it seems to bring up my initial install. Thanks for reading my post - I must be missing something really simple.

bathory · 12-16-2008, 03:42 AM

Two things that come in mind:
1. Make sure you're not booting OpensOlaris from the cd or the .iso image.
2. Did you actually installed OpenSolaris, or you're using it as a live distro? When you first boot OpenSolaris, you can use it as a live distro, or install it. If you're using the live option, then everything you do is lost after exiting.

About your question regarding "Save State" and "Snapshots. Quoting from the Vbox documentation:

Quote:

Save the machine state: With this option, VirtualBox "freezes" the virtual machine by completely saving its state to your local disk. When you later resume the VM (by again clicking the "Start" button in the VirtualBox main window), you will find that the VM continues exactly where it was left off. All your programs will still be open, and your computer resumes operation.
Saving the state of a virtual machine is thus in some ways similar to suspending a laptop computer (e.g. by closing its lid).

With VirtualBox's snapshots, you can save a particular state of a virtual machine for later use. At any later time, you can revert to that state, even though you may have changed the VM considerably since then.
This is particularly useful for making sure that a guest installation is not damaged by accidental changes, misbehaving software, or viruses.

Regards

howard3005 · 12-16-2008, 10:25 AM

Using the live CD first, it places an "Install Icon" on your desktop. I hit that and went thru the installation process. Afterwards, I changed the .iso file from OpenSolaris to the VBox Virtual Additions. It IS possible that I am simply having VM Additions issues. Although I would prefer to have an integrated mouse, I can work with what I have for now. I will install some of my favorite programs, such as XEmacs and MySQL, and report back. Incidentally, I don't understand why, once I exit with "Save State", the Virtual Box program keeps the "settings" icon unlit. I had a tough time reverting the CD image from the OpenSolaris .iso to the VM Additions .iso.

Update:
I was able to install and use some packages off of the default OpenSolaris.org repository, and save them in my image. They were still there when i started up again. Also, my VMadditions(mouse integration, etc) came to life when I responded to an update request once when i had my machine up. There still seems to be a problem with Virtual Box's "Close" dialog. You can "Save State" or you can "Power Off", optionally reverting to the latest snapshot. If you take a snapshot and then choose "Power Off" and "revert", when your machine shuts down you don't have access to your Virtual Box settings, at least not thru the GUI(I did not try the command line interface). If you JUST "Power Off", as noted by the responder above, you lose everything you did that session, possibly including some package installations. What it appears that you have to do is "Close" with "Save State", exit your machine and come back to Virtual Box's main menu. You still can not get to your "Settings" - the icon is not lit for that machine. THEN you have to hit the "Start" button to bring your machine back up, and now "Close" it with only "Power Off" chosen. NOW when you come back to the Virtual Box main menu you DO have access to the machine's "Settings" AND your latest state is saved. The problem is that this is a two step process and even though it appears to work, there MUST be an easier way that I simply do not know about.