Greeting vlakvark,
Zonking zorillas ! I really like your moniker.
Dankie, context http://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlakvark
Your conjecture that the Knoppix installer has trouble writing to the virtual box hardware certainly sounds plausible.
Can I confirm a few (obvious, I sorry) things:
- you are using Knoppix 6.4.3 as both host and guest OS
Yes
- both use 32-bit kernels
<Yes (you're not trying to run a 64-bit guest on a 32-bit host)
<No
- both use the Virtual Box version that comes with Knoppix.
Yes (you haven't installed the latest and greatest off the web)
<No
- you are using the guest extensions in the guest OS
Yes
- you haven't recompiled these
No
- when you say HDD install you mean that and are not confusing that with USB flash install.
No confusion, I am certain I used HDD install script and not the usb flash install.
- you have installed to a real HDD and not to a USB stick (unbranded USB sticks can be a real menace)
The VDI was created on an internal IDE harddrive on my laptop and then later tried again on a desktop with a internal SATA harddrive.
- what file system does the guest OS think it on the disk (ext3 I guess) ?
KNOPPIX only ever allows me to install REISERFS, I have no idea how to change that, I have tried but failed.
- what file system does the host OS think the virtual drive is on (I hope not ntfs) ?
REISERFS
- in VirtualBox is the virtual disk attached to an IDE controller or a SATA controller ?
Interesting. The default install is IDE for a guest os. But my now working one I had at some stage removed the IDE controller and added a SATA controller. This could also possibly have solved my problem.
- how much memory does the virtual machine have and how much does the host have and have you run the memory test on both ?
My laptop I tested on has 1200MB ram I gave 600MB to the guest. The other desktop I tested on had 2Gig ram with 512 for the guest.
- could you explain what you mean by 'manually' replace broken application binaries ?
As I have not been successful at mounting a vbfs share.(still don't know how) I would start a
sshd service on the guest and use gftp to copy working files from my host install to into the guest host.
- boot your virtual machine from DVD and do a fsck on the virtual disk. Is it OK ?
Sorry, I have not tried this. But will if I ever encounter this problem again.
- to md5sum on a few binaries / shared libraries on both the virtual disk and the DVD and see if they are the same.