I am installing on VirtualBox on Mac. During install it asks: Erase disk and install Ubuntu
Question: Is it asking about the virtual disk - hopefully. Is it safe to answer OK?
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9Please consider accepting a answer below if it solves your problem. – Registered User Jul 20 '14 at 10:37
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I just did it myself and I thought the same thing. No worries, it will be perfectly fine. – Savitarr Sep 21 '18 at 01:29
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Assuming you are installing on a virtual machine that is running on your host OSX system, the VM has no access to your host's hardware. It is running on a virtual drive that you created for it.
So no, it will not affect your host and the Ubuntu installer has absolutely no knowledge of the host system. It is safe to answer OK.
terdon
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And what happens when the disk space gets larger than the unused disk space, perhaps not at start, but later, when the usage grows e.g. to 40 out of 50 GB and your main drive has only 40 GB space left? In other words, will the VM ever overwrite data, or will it report this? Will the host just tell you that host space is limited due to that VM? – questionto42 Dec 16 '20 at 20:43
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The installer tells me directly after the choice of the "Erase" option:
If you continue, the changes listed below will be written to the disks. Otherwise, you will be able to make further changes manually. The partition tables of the following devices are changed: SCSI3 (0,0,0)(sda) The following partitions are going to be formatted: partition #1 of SCSI3 (0,0,0)(sda) as ext4. I have chosen "Continue" and nothing bad has happened :). It is probably because I have another VM already installed. I do not think that the VM will ever overwrite data of the host. If I am wrong, please comment. – questionto42 Dec 16 '20 at 20:53 -
@Lorenz the VM will never affect the host. When you install in a VM you are installing in a virtual disk that is only visible to the VM (it exists as a regular file on your host file system). If you fill up that "disk", then the VM might crash, but it won't affect the host system. That said, please don't ask questions in comments. If you have a new question, you can ask it separately. – terdon Dec 17 '20 at 08:59
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I have opened a small question on this here. Please answer there if you like. – questionto42 Dec 17 '20 at 14:45
