VirtualBox chokes on non-existing disk images

[Traumflug]

If a registered and attached disk image disappears for some reason, VirtualBox can't recover from this situation. This is a report on the version OSE 2.0.2, non-OSE 1.6.2 behaved the same, IIRC.

Steps to reproduce (all done in the GUI):

1) Create a virtual machine with one disk (image) attached, take a snapshot.

2) Add another disk to the virtual machine, take another snapshot, quit VirtualBox.

3) Remove the second disk's image by some other means, e.g. Nautilus or a shell command. This scenario is common if you archive disk images, receive disk images from others and/or use one image with different machines or even different VM softwares.

4) Start VirtualBox and try to run this machine.

Results expected:

VirtualBox notices the missing disk image and offers to run the machine without the second disk.This should make no headaches for the guest OS, as physical disks can be removed as well.

Actual Results:

1) VirtualBox puts an exclamation mark behind the missing disk's entry in the list of available disks.

2) VirtualBox refuses to run the virtual machine (NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)).

3) VirtualBox refuses to run the virtual machine even after detaching the non-existing disk from the virtual machine.

4) VirtualBox doesn't allow to replace the disk registration with some other disk image.

5) VirtualBox doesn't allow to remove the non-existing disk's registration with the virtual media manager..

6) VirtualBox doesn't allow to remove the non-existing disk from the list of available disks in virtual media manager.

7) VirtualBox doesn't allow to go back to the first snapshot. Remember, the first snapshot didn't know about the second disk.

Eventually, the GUI refuses to do anything with this virtual machine (all icons and menus greyed out). You have to quit VirtualBox, go to the command line and edit VirtualBox's configuration files manuall to recover.

[rusivi2 (rusivi2-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for posting this bug.

As per upstream bug, this is on their todo list. Hence, this should be marked as wishlist.