Can some files be deleted? about ievms

[tristandunn]

I just deleted *.{exe,rar} from ~/.ievms and IE7 still booted fine. I assume these files aren't needed unless you want to recreate the VM, which shouldn't really be needed with the already provided clean snapshot.

Thanks for pointing this out since I'm on a SSD, too.

[johannesjh]

I was also wondering which files to delete and which to keep after installation. Also, I did not want to have a large hidden ~/.ievms folder hidden in my home directory. So I came up with the following solution for moving all virtual machine files into one place:

In the VirtualBox Manager application, I chose "clone". This copied everything (i.e. the .vhd file, the vbox file, and all the other stuff) into the one ~/VirtualBox\ VMs directory where all my other virtual machines also live.

Thanks for all the good work!

[switz]

+1. I'm curious too. Seems like it's okay to delete.

[xdissent]

Yes. Delete all you want except for the .vhd files. Everything else is only necessary for the installation process.

[justinfrench]

@xdissent this should just be done out-of-the-box then, right?

[FraggleRock]

when you say delete everything except the .vdh i assume you mean the one in ~/Virtualbox VMs

can the one in ~/.ievms/vdh/.. be deleted

[findchris]

What @justinfrench said: Delete big files after successful image creation.
+1

[nickpresta]

@FraggleRock No.

Open up ~/VirtualBox VMs/IE9/IE9.vbox and see the HardDisks section. The actual disks are stored in ~/.ievms/vhd.

You can delete everything minus that folder:

find ~/.ievms -not -wholename "*vhd*" -delete

[weyert]

May I suggest if the script gets changed to make it an option to automatically delete the downloaded files? As it took me the whole day and night to download the files... Always good to have them lying around when the VMs go off-track in VirtualBox

[mmmurf]

+1 on deleting or prompting to delete files that are not necessary for ongoing use.

[Undistraction]

You can delete everything minus that folder

This is only true before you've booted the VMs. My folder contained IE9/10/11.vmdk files and .vbox-extpack files. Deleting them broke all my VMs