grub EFI not found when vdisk reused


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I'm sure I'm just missing something (most likely VERY simple) here, but for the life of me I can not figure out why this is a issue. The backstory here is that I have been getting into Arch recently and wanted to start playing around with different window manager / other package configs etc.. On paper I figured, hey why not do the base install with the bare bones minimal packages installed, then make a copy that "base" install vdisk image and point that copy to a new VM so I can test out the various different configurations without having to redo the entire install each time.

 

I have been doing this with my Windows VM's and Mint daily driver VM (also uses grub efi boot) now for months. I will copy the vdisk file to a share (I actually copy it twice and one of them is stored on a faster tier SSD as a "hot spare") in the event that if I somehow nuke a VM and I can create a new one, no problem. Just copy the vdisk over and it boots with out a issue. However, with the Arch VM, as soon as I attempt to boot off the cloned vdisk image, the efi partition just seems to be missing? Its a copy of the exact same vdisk I can boot up from just fine in the original VM it was created in, but as soon as that vdisk is moved, when I go into the bios, the grub efi is not a option at all.

 

The only thing I can think of is that the virtualized bios has a different hardware ID and that efi is some how limited to that specific unique ID?

 

To be clear here, I CAN just use the same VM instance and just move the vdisk around to the cloned versions, but it just seems strange to have to be confined to ONLY the VM the install was done on when in theory it should be portable, especially considering I am doing it today with my Windows and Mint VM's currently.

Edited by thedudezor
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