compare two virtual machines

[ting...@gmail.com]

Hello,

I want to know if two virtual machines (or snapshorts) could be
compared.

I make some changes to a virtual machine, and take a snapshot. And
later
other changes are made and similarly, another snapshot. If these
snapshots
can be compared, the changes will be caught directly.

Is it possible?

Thanks in advance.

Ting

[Mark F]

It is unlikely that things ever would match exactly since all of the
modification times would not match.

In fact, unless the files that changed were created in the same
order the locations of the files would have changed.

It should be possible to write a program to see which sectors changed
and see if the only differences in these are in times that are
expected to be different.

If things didn't happen in the same order you could look at the
snapshot files to see which files changed and then compare the
files in virtual disks corresponding the state of each
snapshot. This would keep the amount of data compared low,
but be a non-trivial program to write.

The alternative is using a file synchronization program like
Super Flexible File Synchronizer (www.superflexible.com)
or FolderMatch (www.foldermatch.com) to compare two entire
virtual disks corresponding to the snapshots. This would
use more computer time than a specialized program, but is
only a few command/script lines to write.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>
> Ting

[ting...@gmail.com]

Thanks.

Maybe there might need for such functions.
Say, give some plugins on the VM side to capture something it hosts
and then make use of it.

Ting