Is it possible to mount a VirtualBox drive image (.vdi) so the contents can be viewed in Nautilus etc.?
I have a windows 2000 .vdi which won't boot ("inaccessible boot device") after upgrading from VirtualBox 2.x to 3.1.6. I believe the IDE drive details have changed and that all I need to do is access the internal drive image and edit the Windows boot.ini to point to the new location.
Use qemu-nbd, the process is explained on serverfault and in this blog.
Basically, you'll have to install qemu if needed:
sudo apt-get install qemu qemu-utils
Then you'll need to load the network block device module:
sudo rmmod nbd
sudo modprobe nbd max_part=16
Attach the .vdi image to one of the nbd you just created:
sudo qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd0 drive.vdi
Now you will get a /dev/nbd0 block device, along with several /dev/nbd0p* partition device nodes.
sudo mount /dev/nbd0p1 /mnt
Once you are done, unmount everything and disconnect the device:
sudo qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd0
You can convert into standard image and then mount it.
VBoxManage clonehd --format RAW ubuntu.vdi ubuntu.img
Then
mount -t ext3 -o loop,rw ./ubuntu.img /mnt
You will need to KNOW the type of file system, ext3 in this case. After it is mounted, go in and edit away with the editor of your choice. Don't confuse files inside the /mnt location with the running host, or it will be bad.
To check details about your VDI file, run: VBoxManage showhdinfo ubuntu.vdi.
Source: [SOLVED] Open .vdi with archive manager? - ubuntuforums.org
It looks like vdfuse is the tool you are looking for. It is in the Ubuntu repositories. If you want to compile yourself (2010 source) you can do that too.
However for most of us it boils down to a simple:
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-fuse
It seems it now supports dynamic vdi as well.
And to mount the .vdi file in /mnt dir use the command:
sudo vdfuse -a -f /path-to-vdi-file /mnt
The entire disk will be mounted with partitions Partition1 , Partition2 naming format. Then those files can be loop mounted. For example,
sudo mount -o loop /mnt/Parition1 /mountpoint
Set the disk as secondary master for another virtual OS, then boot into this (virtual) OS and you can mount it.
Step 1: Assuming you have a virtual os(say Ubuntu 16.04) already installed in Virtual box, add a new storage from settings of that virtual os.
Step 2: Browse the Vdi file you want to access and select it.
Step 3: Logon to the virtual OS.
Step 4: The virtual disk will probably be available inside the OS. If not, follow step 5
Step 5: Inside the virtual OS, use Gparted and check the disks. and ensure the disk is of type which is accessible by the virtual OS. If it is not, you may have to edit the disk, but then you will lose the existing contents.
Make VirtualBox disk images available to the host by using vboximg-mount utility:
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/vdi/expanded
sudo vboximg-mount -i <path-to-vdi> -o allow_other /mnt/vdi/expanded
ls /mnt/vdi/expanded
<filename.vdi> vhdd vol0 vol1
mkdir /mnt/vdi/vol1
sudo mount /mnt/vdi/expanded/vol1 /mnt/vdi/vol1
cd /mnt # Optional (avoid mount: ... target is busy)
sudo umount /mnt/vdi/vol1 # Order importent
sudo umount /mnt/vdi/expanded
rm -rf /mnt/vdi # Optional (clean-up resources)
Moderator Notice: The
vdfusemodule and packages have been obsolete since 2016 as they were removed from the Ubuntu repositories. While this answer is now obsolete, due to the age of the post and the fact it has upvotes, the answer here has been retained for historical purposes.
I haven't tested myself but there is a fuse module to mount them (vdfuse), check the following page:
Please note that using it for write access is risky.
Usage:
$ ./vdfuse-v<version> -h
USAGE: ./vdfuse [options] -f image-file mountpoint
-h help
-r readonly
-t specify type (VDI, VMDK, VHD, or raw; default: auto)
-f VDimage file
-a allow all users to read disk
-w allow all users to read and write to disk
-g run in foreground
-v verbose
-d debug
To mount an image directly using its filename:
$ ./vdfuse-v<version> -f image.vdi /mnt/vdi
$ mount -o loop /mnt/vdi/Partition1 /mnt/WindowsXP
To mount an machine disk (including snapshots):
$ ./vdautomount-<version> -p /path/to/vdfuse WinXP /mnt/vdi
$ mount -o loop /mnt/vdi/Partition1 /mnt/WindowsXP
You can use vboximg-mount program which is a part of the VirtualBox's command line tools.
As Vojtech Trefny mentioned above,
1) first convert your VDI -> IMG
VBoxManage clonehd --format RAW ubuntu.vdi ubuntu.img
2) Then mount the IMG
mount -t ext3 -o loop,rw ./ubuntu.img /mnt
3) However, as I got this error message:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
and dmesg said:
[3105578.013671] EXT4-fs (loop0): VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem
you need to check out the partition structure of the .img:
fdisk -l ubuntu.img
Disk ubuntu.img: 21.0 GB, 20971520000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2549 cylinders, total 40960000 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf45bc910
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
ubuntu.img1 * 2048 12582911 6290432 83 Linux
ubuntu.img2 12584958 16775167 2095105 5 Extended
ubuntu.img3 16775168 40959999 12092416 83 Linux
ubuntu.img5 12584960 16775167 2095104 82 Linux swap / Solaris
4) As you can see, the main partition is starting at bytes 16775168. However, note that the sector size is 512 bytes, so you need to multiply the results 16775168 x 512 = 8588886016 so you need to offset the mount like this:
mount -t ext3 -o loop,rw,offset=8588886016 ./ubuntu.img /mnt
5) Actually this didn't work for me in case where the filesystem was dirty after resize. In this case I further did this:
dd if=ubuntu.img of=ubuntu.disk bs=512 skip=16775168 count=12092416
e2fsck ubuntu.disk
mount ubuntu.disk /mnt
Install P7Zip - Desktop from Ubuntu Software from this link or by running:
sudo snap install p7zip-desktop
Launch P7Zip Desktop and navigate to the folder containing the .vdi file (probably under VirtualBox VMs in your home directory)
Double click the VDI file in the P7Zip window.
View or extract files as you like.
Not what you requested, but if it's just a matter of getting files off of the vdi, and you want a very quick solution:
apt-get install openssh-server && service ssh restart)sftp hostuser@hostip)put as many files to the host as you need.
Since many answers seem to be either outdated or overcomplicated - my 5 cents (as I have just used probably the simplest solution). You need vboximg-mount and ntfs-3g.
vboximg-mount -l (to list the images)
vboximg-mount --rw --root -i <UUID or full path to the VDI> mountdir/
you should see there something like (where volN are partitions):
ls -l mountdir/
lr--r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 9 13:58 data.vdi -> '/home/username/VirtualBox VMs/winxp/data.vdi'
-rw-r--r-- 1 nobody nogroup 10737418240 Apr 9 14:12 vhdd
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 10733958144 Jan 1 1970 vol0
ntfs-3g mountdir/vol0 mountdir2 -o ro
(or -o rw for read-write).
After that you have contents of the filesystem in mountdir2/, available for reading or writing.
Since this is fuse (both), you have to just umount them (in the reverse order) after use.
I do not think it can be any simpler (no sudo, no qemu and nbd tricks, no extra modules or whatever).
The qemu approach from this answer needed to be modified a bit to work in Ubuntu 20.04.1. First I had to load the nbd module, by:
lsmod | grep nbd
modprobe nbd
This did not work:
sudo mount /dev/nbd0p1 /mnt
I needed to do this instead:
sudo mount /dev/nbd0p2 /mnt
