Hi!
Is there any possibility to "share" virtual machines on windows?
Use the same .vdi and xml configuration file for different users that log
onto the same windows system.

* every user has a VirtualBox.xml in c:\users\<user>\.VirtualBox
* this contains information about all the registered virtual machines

User1 creates a virtual machine, putting vm1.vdi and vm1.xml into a "public"
location.
User2 wants to start this vm. He/She can register vm1.vdi with the UI, or
vboxmanage. Yet, it is impossible to register vm1.xml because it already
contains a hard disk.
The same applied to any dvd image including the host drive(s).

I have seen the following solutions, none of them nice:
(1) register the .vdi and create a new virtual machine.
 This breaks as soon as one user saves the state while another boots the
 disk, or one creates a snapshot while the other one works on the base
 image.
(2) patch the vm1.xml (remove the hard disk), register it for user2, and
 patch it again (add the hard disk) while VBoxSVC is not running
(3) manually edit the VirtualBox.xml while VBoxSvc is not running
(4) copy the VirtualBox.xml from/to a shared location, loosing all privat
 changes

Is there any other possibility?
Like, configuring virtualbox to use a different location for the main
VirtualBox.xml "registration" file, so that all users can use the same one?

The UI allows to change the default location for .vdi and machine config
files, yet, this is stored in the (user's) VirtualBox.xml, again.

I'm talking about Windows host here, so, two users accessing a vm at the
same time is not a problem (as long as windows is mostly single-user, anyhow).

The problem is similar on Linux, yet, soft- or hardlinks may be solutions in
that case ...

Yours,
Sebastian


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