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  • #18054

Closed
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Created Dec 09, 2020 by sajolida@sajolidaMaintainer0 of 1 task completed0/1 task

Distribute USB images by default for all virtual machines

It's possible to start VirtualBox from both:

  • A physical USB stick, after doing some not-too-complicated magic on the command line:

    https://www.how2shout.com/how-to/virtualbox-virtual-machine-boot-usb.html#Step_3_Create_VDMK_Raw_file_of_connected_bootable_USB_drive

    Users can use the Persistent Storage on the physical USB stick out of the box.

  • A USB image, after converting it to VDI on the command line and increasing its size:

    $ VBoxManage convertdd eos-eos3.0-amd64-amd64.161024-144409.base.img eos.vdi

    https://www.pragmaticlinux.com/2020/09/how-to-increase-the-disk-size-in-a-virtualbox-virtual-machine/

    When creating a Persistent Storage, I got:

    Error: Tails is running from non-USB / non-SDIO device.

    Probably something that could be fixed.

In both cases, users also have to remove live-media=removable. (#6397)

  • Double-check whether we could workaround the need to remove live-media=removable.

Once we get there we could advertize USB image only for virtual machines as virt-manager works fine with USB images as well. I didn't test GNOME Disks.

Stats from WhisperBack reports in 2019 and 2020:

ISO VFAT
VirtualBox 24 50% 1 2%
QEMU 12 25% 11 23%
48
  • For QEMU where USB images are already available, half of users choose them despite not being the default download.
  • Some people already running VirtualBox from a physical or virtual USB stick.
Edited Dec 15, 2020 by sajolida
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