Bake Virtualbox VHD into Snapshot ISO

[Lobstercat]

Very small bit of history: I've been a fan since it was MEPIS. But several computers in 3 places (I'm living here in Manila, also work with someone in NJ and NY) had serious problems and I really became a fan of the Snapshot feature, and from MX-15 to MX-17, more or less, we were all only running MX Snapshot ISOs burned to DVDs. Everything is fine now, but I still do most of my work on a MX Snapshot ISO. The problemm is, a lot of software only runs on Windows. I havve been running Windows using VHDs in bare metal mode or using Virtualbox for quite a while now but really want to combine them into just one file.
I tried several ways to get a VHD into my MX ISO but all were unsuccessful, eventually I just installed my Snapshot to an open partition, then added my VHD (got it down to about 25GB) and made another Snapshot off of that. But when I try to run it in Virtualbox, it fails. I see it slowly taking up free disk space (I always have about 8GB free space on my Snapshot ISOs) and then I get an error message when it runs out of space, something about a read only file system. Yes, okay I know that an ISO would be read only. But each time I make a Snapshot I have 8GB free and I can download things, install things, rewrite things, etc. I checked the VHD file itself and it's universal RW so shouldn't be any problems. Also, I have a small data VHD maybe around 5GB, and I don't seem to have any problem reading or writing off of that, though I should do more testing to be certain. Of course any changes I make to it are gone next time I boot since it's baked into the ISO. I have no problem running a Virtualbox session using the same VHD (25GB Windows) but on another actual partition.
On the one had, I'm guessing that the 8GB free space is based on my RAM, and all changed are thus made in RAM. When I run the VHD from my Snapshot ISO Windows is constantly writing things and so ... who knows, it may need 50GB free RAM to handle all the writes. On the other hand, my smaller data VHD doesn't suffer the same problems. True, it's not actually running Windows, but I can write a 5GB file to it and my disk space doesn't seem to change. All the read writes should be occuring within the VHD itself right? The whole file is already there, it's a container unto itself right?
This is a weird topic to be sure, I don't know if anyone else on the planet is trying to do something like this, but just in case, I'm asking. A few other questions probably better suited for a new topic but still somewhat related to my main question would be: other than adding more RAM, is there any way to increase the size of the "free space" on my Snapshot ISO? And has anyone successfully gotten Davinci Resolve for Debian to run on MX linux using an AMD laptop? Throwing those out there just in case no one has any idea about the VHD question, though they're probably just as weird.
Well that sums it up for now, I'll update if I get any more testing done. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day!

[Vektor]

I have wanted a VBOX OS ready to play optical medium for years. It seem VBOX does not like read only file systems for the guest. I use usb for RW but it is slow, and I have never had enough ram to to play anything that monstrous.

How big is the VHD file on the iso? Can it be copied to a RW medium? That would take about a year, right?

I hope you find a way.

Vektor

[Vektor]

Hope I am on-topic...

Can a VBOX vdi run from an optical disk? The second post describes a differencing disk that uses a writable drive for changes. That is probably the best I can hope for.

On the VBOX forum:
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=24992

Vektor

[Lobstercat]

Firstly, sorry for not replying, got busy with other projects. Work & stuff, you know. :) Anyway, just an update here, as best I can remember since it's been a while. I had a VHD with WIndows and a VDI with Android. The command worked great for Android, pretty much as expected. But to update the VDI you need to do that elsewhere and then copy the new VDI onto the disk to replace the old one, then run the immutable command again. But Android wasn't the point, that was just a test, what I really needed was Windows. The immutable command failed on Windows every time. Since this Windows was JUST for Virtualbox, I didn't need it to be a VHD so I changed it to VDI. The immutable command worked! Sorta. But then every time Windows would boot I lost the cursor control. Items would highlight as the cursor moved over them, but there was no way to click on anything. Well, that's not going to work...
That's more or less where I was at. I will check out the post from Vektor & see what happens there. Also have been checking out alternative virtual machines, no luck so far. By that I mean instead of Virtualbox, something else that can run a virtual machine in MX. I found instructions for a QEMU machine, but several packages are apparently not in my distribution. I also found something about using WINE, while my programs don't install well under WINE, it has been suggested if I can make them into portable versions they may work that way. I am following many leads, often times getting distracted, but following slowly but surely. Hope to continue to keep you posted....
Thank you all for your time and help, and for reading my rambling. Have a great day!