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VBoxManage.exe convertfromraw \\.\PhysicalDrive2 C:\output.vdi --format VDI
Initially when I created the VM I thought would be temporary. It turned out to be not so temporary.
I thought I could just get away with using GParted and resizing the blocks around, but it turned out to be more tricky than expected.
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING,
MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR VIRTUAL DRIVE!
For example sake, here's my 10gb guinea pig.
In your host, you have to run some commands to increase the capacity of the drive before you can do anything with partitions.
Use a calculator to calculate how much space you want to allocate in MB.
For reference, 100GB = 1024mb * 100 = 102,400mb
In command prompt, run these commands:
This will only increase the capacity of the file itself.
You can check it in the VirtualBox VM details page, but it's not actually accessible yet.
You still have more work to do.
Lo and behold, I am now 50. Oh wait I'm not, I just look it.
I used a copy of LinuxMint and configured it for Live CD usage. This was purely because I already had the ISO on hand. If you don't, you can save yourself the wait and just grab a GParted LiveCD from their website.
Remember to test the "resized" partition before continuing!
If you're not seeing the space show up in df results, to make that space accessible to the partition you'll need to run two more commands.
The MOUNTPOINT for my VM was "/dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root"
First command expands the LVM while the second resizes the filesystem.
Now, are you sure that you don't have too much space?
At time of writing, I tested this with the latest version of Virtualbox v4.3.22 and Windows 10 Technical Preview Build 9926.
Your PC needs a restart.
Please hold down the power button.
Error Code: 0x0000000A
Parameters:
0xFFD00000
0x000000FF
0x00000003
0x8158B5E3
This baffled me for some time because I thought VirtualBox was buggy or something. Oddly enough, telling Virtualbox to expect a 64-bit operating system will fix it.
I'm not sure if this is a bug within Windows 10 (because it worked fine in previous technical preview releases) or a bug with VirtualBox. Either way, hope it gets fixed before Windows 10 gets released!
First of all, you'll need the Windows 10 Tech Preview ISO. You can get it from Microsoft's download page. I grabbed English 64-bit (x64), which was "WindowsTechnicalPreview-x64-EN-US.iso"
Back over in Virtualbox-land, as per usual you just create a new virtual machine for Windows 8.1 and matching the build you've got (x86 or x64). I'll assume you got the x64 build. Everything is per usual, create a new hard-drive, etc.
Once you're done, go to "System" settings for that VM. Despite what another guide has wrongfully stated, make sure that "Enable EFI (special OSes only)" is OFF and under the Processor tab that "Enable PAE/NX" is OFF as well. If these are left on, you won't be able to enter the installation process.
Lastly, go to "Storage" and select the CD icon from "Storage tree". Click on the CD icon on the right and select "Choose a virtual disk file", then select your Windows 10 ISO file.
Nothing out of the ordinary here. Takes about half an hour on a regular non-ssd HDD.
It installs smoothly just like Windows 8.1 and even has the same wizard process during the first boot.
Yay, store apps. Exactly what I didn't want.
That bloody "Almost ready" was there for a frikken long time!
Unfortunately, there isn't any visible way of getting rid of that list of apps from the start menu.
I'll find a way by reworking my BreadCrumbKiller or SPASM programs.
To get rid of the live tiles from your Start menu, see here.
Majority of it works, but if you wanted the whole she-bang you can extract the drivers and manually install the video drivers.
cd /d D:
# If x64
VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64 /extract /D=C:\Drivers
# If x86
VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86 /extract /D=C:\Drivers
I ran into this when trying to upgrade my VirtualBox from 4.2.6 to 4.3.6. It was a really frustrating one to fix. There are a few suggested fixes floating around such as:
None of them worked for me.
What I ended up doing was:
This time it should work!
Simple, no?
If you're doing Android dev, most likely you're working on a computer with an x86 compatible CPU.
Unfortunately the older versions of Android SDK images (including 2.3, still one of the most popular in the play store at time of writing) are optimised for ARM chips. The ARM optimised commands are run in the emulator and then translated into x86 commands. This is very slow, but you since you're reading this you already know that.
Even with the Intel chipset improvements from Icecream Sandwich onwards, the emulator still leaves much to be desired in terms of performance.
Android x86, as the name suggests, was originally made to run Android on x86 computers. A wonderful side-effect of this is that it runs incredibly fast in a virtual machine compared to the standard Android emulator.
Amazingly fast!
And getting it to work for debugging isn't that hard either.
Once it's up and running, reboot it (just to see how fast it starts). No more waiting for snapshots to load!
Now for some stuff to help you get started with Android dev.
You'll need to connect your Eclipse Android SDK debugger to the VM, and to do that you'll need to set up port forwarding on the VM.
By default it's a fairly generous tablet sized screen. For phone development, you can change the screen orientation to portrait orientation.
There's no way of sugar coating this. In trade for the speed and performance you get with this method of debugging, you lose the ability to rotate the screen while the VM is running.
If you've got any way around this, please let me know!
This was definitely trickier than expected! There are two things you need to do. First is to create the resolution, second is to edit the grub file.
Open up command prompt and type in:
cd /d %PROGRAMFILES%\VirtualBox\
vboxmanage setextradata "Android 2.3" "CustomVideoMode1" "320x480x16"
This creates an extra resolution for your Android X86 virtual machine (replace "Android 2.3" with whatever your one is called). Of course, you can replace the resolution with whatever you want to.
Now fire up the VM. Once it loads up to the lock screen (you don't have to swipe to unlock):
Restart your VM. When it boots, it'll give you an option to press enter to see video modes.
Take note of the "mode" next to your resolution. For me "320x480x16" was "360" (bottom left). Type in 360 and continue loading.
This bit took me a while to figure out, but "360" is a hex value and you'll have to convert it value to a decimal first. In this case, 360 hex is 864 in decimal value.
Time to edit the file in vi again.
You should now see this wonderful phone sized emulator on your screen.
While setting up my Android x86 emulator on VirtualBox, I had some issues getting the networking right. VMWare would get this working easily, but it's quite an expensive and heavy handed piece of software if you think about it.
What I wanted was to have my Android x86 guest be able to fetch information from a server running on the host. Also, the host had to be able to connect to the guest for debugging.
After a few searches, I found that some guides only let you connect from host to guest. Others only let you connect from guest to host.
This one says you can connect between the two only if there is a router/internet connectivity. This was a bit of a deal breaker as I do a lot of my work on the train.
After a few hours of tinkering I had great success using "NAT", but only with port forwarding enabled. Two way communication between host/guest, and internet connectivity as well!
To do that:
Host to guest for debugging and guest with internet connectivity.
Guest to host connectivity.
You still connect from guest to host via 10.0.2.2, but to connect from host to guest you'll have to port forward the request from host to the guest. From host to guest you use "localhost" or 127.0.0.1 instead of the actual guest IP.
For example, before you'd have this command:
adb.exe connect 192.168.56.15
Now it's:
adb.exe connect localhost
Now that it's all connected, GET BUSY!
