By Alexander Bitar

1. How do I clone my virtual
machine, so that the clone
has the following
specifications?
{hostname: blue, new_vm_can_ping_google?: yes}

2. 1. Open Virtual Box, and right click on the box you want to
clone. Enter a name for the cloned machine.

3. 2. After hitting next, we want to select ‘Full
clone’

4. 3. Next, select ‘Everything’ When asking which
snapshots to be cloned as well. Press Clone after.

5. 4. Once completed we should see our new VM.

6. 5. Now start the VM. We want to change the
host name permanently to ‘blue’.
• To do this we need to edit the ‘HOSTNAME’ file in the /etc/ directory
as the root user.
• Execute ‘cd /etc/’ to get to the /etc/ directory.
• Next execute ‘vim HOSTNAME’
• Our file will appear as so :

7. 6. Now we edit the file to change the ‘red’ to
‘blue’
• Type in ‘:e’ to edit the file.
• Ensure you are in ‘insert’ mode ( click on the insert button ) you
should see “– INSERT –” bolded in the bottom left corner.
• Edit ‘red.lab.ubnetdef’ to ‘blue.lab.ubnetdef’
• Once edited, escape out of insert mode ( hit escape 3 times ) and
then enter in ‘:wq’ to save the file once done

8. 7. Reboot the system by executing ‘reboot’
• Once rebooted you can execute the command ‘hostname’ and it
should print ‘blue’. You have successfully cloned and changed the
hostname of a machine!