Trouble w/ VirtualBox Deployment

[TomDay]

Been searching for others might have done this in the past but no results on Jamfnation, so I gave it a whirl as a test.

I have Virtual Box and a Windows VM created on my device working 100%. Then created a new pkg via Composer that includes the VirtualBox app and related VM files (.vbox, vmdk etc). On my device those files and folders add up to nearly 18 GB, but the pkg created in composer is only ~ 100MB. Obviously doing something wrong here. Permissions look to be OK. Any experience deploying VirtualBox or tips to share?

[Asnyder]

Are you transferring the Virtual drive? seems like that would be what's missing. when it comes to 18Gb.

[TomDay]

@Asnyder yes I need to transfer the virtual drive and believe (thought) I did it correctly, I was under the impression that when I added my "VirtualBox VMs" folder that houses all that data (.vbox, .vmdk), it would work.

Here is a screenshot of all the files in Composer

[Asnyder]

@TomDay They're stored in ~/VirtualBox VMs by default. Here's what mine looks like.

[TomDay]

@Asnyder I moved my "/VirtualBox VMs" folder from my user folder to the Applications folder for what I was thinking is easier deployment. After making changes in the settings the app works correctly on my device that i am setting this up on. Figured it would follow suit for Composer. Wonder if moving the folder broke something for deployment. If that's the case and the /VirtualBox VMs folder needs to be in my user folder, how would I deploy that to other users?

[Asnyder]

You could make it a dmg with the fill user options (I don't remember what they're called) But the way you're doing it, in theory, should work. I would check one of the computers you're testing on to see if the virtual disk transferred.

[TomDay]

@Asnyder Thx, through a lot of troubleshooting, I can get it to work with FEU. I got hit with the 8GB limit on packages the way I was building in Composer. Dragging to the sidebar and building the DMG from there was the trick.

Now that I have the deployment built and pushed out, I'm getting errors starting up the VM, referring to the original location of the install on my test box /Users/tom/Virtual Box VMs. I can correct that by removing the vmdk and re-adding in "Storage" prefs of VirtualBox but my next error:

Google searches are not helpful. At this point, I'm ready to throw in the towel and just push out the app and appliance and then manually configure the 40 machines. Wasted 2 days so far :-(

[Asnyder]

@TomDay With only 40 machines it might be easier that way.

[StoneMagnet]

@TomDay I haven't personally tried deploying VirtualBox via Self Service, but you might want to take a look at the .vbox file in an editor like BBEdit and see if there's a hard coded path to the .vmdk file you could tweak via a script as part of your deployment policy.

[TomDay]

@StoneMagnet Great tip on editing the .vbox file with textwrangler. There was something hardcode in there that changing would be easier for deployment. This install is fighting me every inch of the way as it is no longer a deployment issue. When I try to start the VM I get cryptic error messages on multiple different machines. (Success on 15" retina, no success on 11" Air or 13" Air). Tryin the oracle support forum now.