Create split virtual HD for VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a great tool and I like it a lot.  However, the inability of creating split virtual  hard drive into 2GB chunks can be a problem at times.  Most flash pen drives use FAT32 to maximize its compatibility with different OSes, but at the same time this limits the maximum file size to 2GB.  The inability of spliting virtual drive into 2GB blocks makes transporting  native VDI image files used by  VirtualBox impossible.  However, there is a workaround as VirtualBox is also compatible with images created by VMWare which allows split images.

Today, I found this website which allow people to create empty VMware compatble images without using a VMWare product.

http://www.easyvmx.com/new-easyvmx.shtml

With the help of this link, you can now create virtual machines with split file feature under VirtualBox.

Fix VFS Invalid Compression Format

Today my laptop lookup while it was updating, and I had to hard reset it.  However, the system won't boot up properly, and instead, it gave me the Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block error.  I have tried a number of suggestions found in Google, but didn't have much luck.  Eventually, I managed to restore my system by the following.

1. Boot up the system using a LiveCD.  (I was using the Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop live CD)
2. Open a command prompt, and sudo -s to become a super user
3. Mount your boot partition, i.e. mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/
4. Use chroot to become the root user of the newly mounted partition, i.e. chroot /mnt/
5. Use aptitude search linux to find out the available images package on the repository
6. Reinstall the image, i.e. aptitude reinstall linux-image-2.6.28-15-generic
7. After it all done, get your fingers crossed, and reboot the system

With some luck, you may be able to get a working system back like myself.

To be on the safe side, I have rerun the aptitude reinstall linux-image-2.6.28-15-generic command again after I booted back to Gnome.

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