Move boxes virtual machines

How do I move a Virtual Machine between computers?

Note $USER is a variable or place holder for whatever your username is on your system. For example: if your username is glen, /home/$USER would mean /home/glen

Moving a virtual machine has three basic steps:

• Move or copy the hard drive file that is kept in:/home/$USER/.local/share/gnome-boxes/images
• Export of the XML file via VIRSH dumpxml.
• Import of the XML file via VIRSH create.

Move a Virtual Machine Hard drive "image" file between Computers

• Open your home folder via files
• Press CTRL+H to view hidden files.
• Open the .local folder.
• Open the share folder.
• Open the gnome-boxes folder.
• Open the images folder.

• If You only have one virtual machine it will be called boxes-unknown by default. Right Click on the file of the virtual machine and copy it to the USB drive, network drive, or what ever media you will be using to copy your Virtual Machine to the other computer.

• On the receiving computer, do the steps 1-6 again, but this time you will be copying/pasting the drive image you found in step 7 into the folder:

  /home/$USER/.local/share/gnome-boxes/images 

Copy the Virtual Machine "Config" XML file between Computers

• Open a terminal window.
• type in

   virsh list --all 

• If you only have one Virtual machine the default will be called boxes-unknown.
• To export the boxes-unknown machine configuration, issue the command:

   virsh dumpxml boxes-unknown >~/boxes-unknown.xml 

This will place the xml config file in the root of your home folder. So it would be located at:

 /home/$USER/boxes-unknown.xml 

• Now that the configuration XML file "boxes-unknown.xml" is in the root of your home directory, copy it to the USB drive, network drive, or what ever media you will be using to copy your Virtual Machine to the other/receiving computer.
• On the receiving computer, copy the boxes-unknown.xml into the root of your home folder:

   /home/$USER/boxes-unknown.xml

• On the receiving computer, open a terminal window.
• In the terminal window issue the command:

   virsh create boxes-unknown.xml 

Now Your virtual machine should be ready, open Boxes on the receiving / destination computer and turn it on