Has anyone else run into an issue with installing Qiime2 on VirtualBox recently? I am running VirtualBox Version 5.1.28 on Windows 7. I downloaded the latest VirtualBox image of Qiime2 (2017.9) and was able to import it just fine. However, I ran into errors trying to open the VM. Just to be sure, I tried downloading and importing several earlier versions of Qiime (2017.8, 2017.7, 2017.6) and got the same errors with all. I then had a colleague try it on his VirtualBox (an older installation) and it worked fine, so I am suspecting some incompatibility issues.
The error messages are below. Thanks for any advice!!
Could not open the medium ‘C:\Users\jw\VirtualBox VMs\QIIME 2 Core - 2017.6 (1497566713)\QIIME 2 Core - 2017.6 (1497566713)-disk001.vmdk’.
VMDK: inconsistency between grain table and backup grain table in ‘C:\Users\jw\VirtualBox VMs\QIIME 2 Core - 2017.6 (1497566713)\QIIME 2 Core - 2017.6 (1497566713)-disk001.vmdk’ (VERR_VD_VMDK_INVALID_HEADER).
Hi @silver1eaf! Thanks for the report! I just double-checked — the 2017.9 build 1506979645 was built using VirtualBox Version 5.1.22 r115126. I opened an issue to track the discussion and progress of this particular issue. In the immediate, you could downgrade your version of VirtualBox to match this particular version, but I know that is a major bummer and not ideal. If you are only using the cli interface for QIIME 2 you could check out our Docker build, as an alternative on Windows. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Hi @thermokarst, thanks for the quick reply! I’ve already installed the QIIME2 cli. I’ll check out the next version of the VirtualBox image when it’s released.
The QIIME 2 Virtual Machines are now available! We have QIIME 2 2017.10 available on AWS, Docker, and VirtualBox, please see the docs for more information.
The 2017.10 VirtualBox image is compatible with the latest version of VirtualBox (5.2.0). The VirtualBox images file now has a Compatible VirtualBox Version column indicating the version of VirtualBox that the image is known to be compatible with. We know what those versions are for 2017.10 and 2017.9 – compatibility of older QIIME 2 releases is unknown so those are marked with ?.
Moving forward, QIIME 2 images will be compatible with the latest version of VirtualBox that’s available at build time. This way, users aren’t forced to downgrade VirtualBox, and are encouraged to stay up-to-date with the latest VirtualBox and QIIME 2 releases.
@silver1eaf you should be able to install the latest version of VirtualBox (5.2.0) to use the new 2017.10 image. Let us know if you run into any issues!