Can't save data or settings in VirtualBox

I'm new to VirtualBox. Someone helped me set up a Fedora 16 installation on VirtualBox.

The problem is that I can't save anything. I first tried setting up LAMP and installed Apache and MySQL from the command line and it worked. It said "completed", and when I typed

rpm -q mysql 

it found the package.

But when I rebooted the machine (by clicking the restart button INSIDE Fedora, not on the VirtualBox screen) all the changes were lost. The same happened when I tried saving a file to the desktop.

What settings need to be changed to fix this issue?

Solution 1:

There could be something wrong with your install. Make sure that you're not booting to a 'LiveCD' and that Fedora is in fact installed on to the VHD. It could be that the CD is still 'in' the VM, check to make sure that the .iso used to install Fedora has be unmounted.

When I first started using virtualization, I blamed everything on VirtualBox. Now I've found that it's best to begin your troubleshooting from within. Treat it like a 'real' machine. Did you take the CD out before rebooting? Is Fedora installed properly? Asking the easy questions first would've saved me a lot of time on the VirtualBox forums hunting for things I had screwed up myself.

If the disc won't unmount, it is probably in use by the system. Shut down the machine and then unmount the .iso.