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I am using ubuntu-13.04 and want to install this same OS in Oracle-virtual box. I don't have the ISO image and don't want do download the big image file.

Is there any way to directly install it on Vbox?

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  • You can make a copy of the host, by using dd: either boot a Live CD, then pipe dd into nc (netcat) which connects to a Live CD-booted virtual machine that pipes nc into dd to write on the virtual disk; or boot a Live CD, create a virtual disk that gives the VM raw disk access (see the VirtualBox User Manual, it's online) to the host partition, then dd in the VM from the raw disk to another virtual disk that will store the copy. Both methods will return an exact copy of the host, so you might wish to reconfigure /etc/fstab, /etc/network/interfaces/, etc. – ignis Jul 7 '13 at 18:02
  • ... and, both methods must be done when the host OS is not booted (because you can't safely dd a mounted partition, which is because part of the data that is to be written to the filesystem is cached in RAM, which means that dd might copy an inconsistent f.s.). – ignis Jul 7 '13 at 18:03
  • Also if the virtual box hard disk file exists on the same partition as the one you are dd'ing then you're asking for trouble. 1) it won't fit. 2) it's changing as you're writing it! – Matt H Jul 7 '13 at 20:59
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No. The ISO carries packages that are unpacked into the target. When you install Ubuntu, you do not get the original packages but only unpacked functional versions. They are not available to Ubiquity and must be downloaded again.

However, if you do have a CD, you can create a new VM and instruct Virtualbox to use the physical CD drive as that of the VM for installation.

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