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I am having a problem installing xubu 13.10 as a VM in KVM, but running as live disk in 'virtual box' seems to work good. So I guess I will go ahead for now and run 13.10 as VM in virtual box, but I have a question regarding the installation: when the install gets to the part that inquires about on what disk to select there are 4 options. The first offers to "erase disk and install Ubuntu" and the last allows the user to do "something else" as shown in this link:

http://www.wikihow.com/Image:Install-Ubuntu-on-VirtualBox-Step-30.jpg

I created the virtual disk 'xubu13-10.vdi' on partition 'sdb7' so I assume the first option, "erase disk and install Ubuntu" refers to 'sdb7'. When I select the "something else" option, only 'sda' is listed, and I cannot seem to select anything else, like sdb and sdb7 in particular. This looks sort of scary since I do not want the install to do anything on 'sda' whatsoever.

The confusion for me arises from the fact that when I last installed xubu, 10.04 I think, that 4th option to do "something else" allowed the user to manually select the partition on which to install, allowing one to be crystal clear about where xubu would be installed. I guess if someone could just verify that the first option, "erase disk and install ubuntu" will erase only the partition, sdb7, I selected when setting up the 'vdi' then I am set to go.

nanker
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1 Answers1

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By creating a .VDI file you had created a virtual container to hold your virtual machine's OS.

This container will be presented to the Ubuntu installer as a hard disk ready for formatting and installing the OS. Because you likely only had attached one virtual drive to your machine it is presented as /sda to your virtual machine's Ubuntu.

On installation the VDI-file only will be partitioned and formatted. Only if you had attached a real partition to your virtual machine you need to worry about data on that partition. This is a more complicated process. It will not be done by default from a GUI-supported installation of a virtual machine in Virtual Box.

Also see How to install Ubuntu on VirtualBox?

Community
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Takkat
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  • yeah I went ahead and set things up and all is hunky dorey. But it wouldn't hurt for, I think ubuntu installer at the hard disk window to mention which hard disk/partition it plans to erase and install on, just as a quick verification. Even after the install started the only way I could be sure xubu was installing on sdb7 was to keep an eye on the partition and confirm the .vdi was increasing in size. – nanker Apr 20 '14 at 12:36
  • yeah, it would be nice to have some clues as to which drive we use when installing Ubuntu - but this can not be done for a VM. It's only a fake virtual hard drive but it's being presented to the Ubuntu installer as if it was a real drive. Not much we can do about this, I'm afraid. – Takkat Apr 20 '14 at 20:11