Virtualbox to create "master" image for multiple burns?

    I see a lot of people asking how to run LE in Virtualbox/VMWare, but I can't quite find info for what I would like to do.

    I'm trying to get LE to run in Virtualbox so that I can do all my configuration, add-on installation and setup, etc., then convert the .vdi to an iso that I can then plop onto the few raspberry pis I have running LE. Is this even possible?

    I have the latest rpi2/3 img.gz file. I've converted it to an iso using iat --iso -i  [LEfilename].img.gz -o [LEfilename].iso in the terminal, so that VB will see/load it, but that craps out with a (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED) error, so I'm hitting a roadblock at Step 1b, and it's not making me hopeful for "my" "plan".

    Is there some kind of guide for doing this? I can't believe I'm the first one to think of master configuration/mass deployment of LE, but my searches keep coming up with people wanting to run LE in containers.

    • Best Answer
    Quote from justnowsigningup

    I'm trying to get LE to run in Virtualbox so that I can do all my configuration, add-on installation and setup, etc., then convert the .vdi to an iso that I can then plop onto the few raspberry pis I have running LE. Is this even possible?

    You can probably run or directly import the Generic OVA image we don't support (but is available) for vmware into VirtualBox; staff are mostly using vmware but there are other people who use VB. That will avoid the need to create an ISO version of our installer .img which likely won't work anyway due to all the paths being wrong. NB: You could create an installer USB as-normal and then boot the VM from that to install to the internal VM disk (as normal) .. would be much easier.

    However the VB setup is x86_64 and your RPi2/3 boards are armv8 so even if you abandon the idea of "converting the image to use on an RPi" (which is technically not possible due to different CPU architectures) and do a simple "backup /storage and restore /storage" you will still find that there are config differences due to Intel and RPi hardware being different, and binary add-ons that you backed-up will not be compatible (due to wrong CPU arch again).

    In the end the amount of effort/energy expended trying to do this "the clever way" will be far greater than just setting up a couple of RPi boards the un-clever/normal way. Set-up one board and then learn to "scp" the important bits of /storage/.kodi to the others and you can replicate the config in 10mins per-board.

    Makes sense. I honestly didn't think of the different architectures. I was thinking virtual machine meant virtual machine, but I guess the keyword really is "virtual." Plus, it didn't dawn on me until long after I made the post, but I have one Pi 3 and one Pi 4, so it still probably wouldn't be a straight-up copy/paste/dd operation, anyway.

    In the end, I just did it the old fashioned way, but used one of the remote-control apps on an Android tablet. Then I could use the browser to find links and stuff, and didn't have to type things out with my remote in the on-screen keyboard.

    Thanks for the input.