[vbox-dev] showing empty disks attached to controllers via command line

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Hi Geoff,

Geoff Nordli wrote:
> I am running Vbox 3.1 Beta 3 on a Windows 7 Host.  I believe the “empty” 
> value hasn’t been included showvminfo print out. 

Thanks for the report. You're absolutely right.

> If I have a VM registered that has controllers with “Empty” mediums 
> attached to it.  The VM below has an empty DVD attached to the IDE 
> Secondary Master, and a Floppy attached on “Device 0”.  From the command 
> line there is no way to know something is attached on that controller, 
> which makes it difficult to delete the VM.     

Fixed in SVN. It now prints "emptydrive", according to the usual 
conventions.

> vboxmanage showvminfo test1 --machinereadable | find "Controller"
> 
>  
> 
> storagecontrollername0="IDE Controller"
> 
> storagecontrollername1="Floppy Controller"
> 
> "IDE Controller-0-0"="none"
> 
> "IDE Controller-0-1"="none"
> 
> "IDE Controller-1-0"="none"
> 
> "IDE Controller-1-1"="none"
> 
> "Floppy Controller-0-0"="none"
> 
> "Floppy Controller-0-1"="none"
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Ideally, I would really like to see a “--force” switch, which will allow 
> you unregister and delete a VM, even if there is something attached to it.

We already thought about such a change, there was just no time yet. It's 
just one of those features which are not really high priority since 
customers normally don't rely on VBoxManage for constructing a VM 
management solution. Contributions accepted.

Also note that this will share one problems with the GUI - what should 
be the exact semantics for deleting the images? We've already received 
loud complaints that VirtualBox is responsible for losing free space...

Klaus