Does anyone know if it is possible to "convert" a VMware guest to be a Fedora- virtualization guest?
I first tried with Win2k. I know that Win2k basically works becasue I did a fresh install onto a virtual IDE disk. But, my Vmware guest uses a SCSI disk. Could not get it to work.
OK, so lets try something simpler: Fedora 9.
Rather than going the whole way, lets just see if I can get the disk to be recognized. So, define a new guest with a IDE virtual disk and a Fedora 9 install disk ISO image. Boot up into rescue mode.
1. First, add a new storage SCSI device and use the vmdk file from VMware ... nope, no good partition table.
2. Next, convert the vmdk file to raw using qemu-img and use this raw image for a new storage SCSI device ... still did not work ... no good partition table (fdisk -l).
What am I doing wrong?
Does anyone know if the SCSI device support works?
GEne
On Sat, Jul 04, 2009 at 01:54:20PM -0400, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
- Next, convert the vmdk file to raw using qemu-img and use this raw image for
a new storage SCSI device ... still did not work ... no good partition table (fdisk -l).
Using qemu-img to convert the vmdk images to raw should work. Once a vmx file has been unpacked, it often[1] contains several individual *.vmdk files which you have to convert and reassemble into a raw file. Use a command like:
qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O raw image-s0*.vmdk image.raw
The question is, why do you get no partition table. You can try to examine the image in guestfish[2] to see what exactly it contains - eg. does it have a good partition table, does it have any LVM LVs, etc:
$ guestfish -a image.raw --ro
<fs> run <fs> list-devices <fs> list-partitions <fs> lvs
You can also use virt-inspector to see what kernel / drivers are installed.
Rich.
[1] I wonder if these are snapshots.
[2] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=8391
On Saturday 04 July 2009 18:40:04 Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
On Sat, Jul 04, 2009 at 01:54:20PM -0400, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
- Next, convert the vmdk file to raw using qemu-img and use this raw
image for a new storage SCSI device ... still did not work ... no good partition table (fdisk -l).
Using qemu-img to convert the vmdk images to raw should work. Once a vmx file has been unpacked, it often[1] contains several individual *.vmdk files which you have to convert and reassemble into a raw file. Use a command like:
qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O raw image-s0*.vmdk image.raw
The question is, why do you get no partition table. You can try to examine the image in guestfish[2] to see what exactly it contains - eg. does it have a good partition table, does it have any LVM LVs, etc:
$ guestfish -a image.raw --ro
<fs> run <fs> list-devices <fs> list-partitions <fs> lvs
You can also use virt-inspector to see what kernel / drivers are installed.
Rich.
[1] I wonder if these are snapshots.
[2] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=8391
First of all, let me thank you for the tip on guestfish. I am a newbie to Fedora-virtualization and am not aware of all the packages involves let alone all of the functions/packages that could be useful. It would be nice if there was a list somewhere which listed such packages along with a brief description of what each did.
The vmware virtual disk file I used was first made into a single file rahter than split using vmware-vdiskmager.
OK, I used guestfish to verify that my "raw" image of a virtual disk was good. I then realized that part of my problem was that the rescue-mode system on the Fedora 9 netinst and the one on the Fedora 11 netinst differed in the order of disks (what was sda and what was sdb). Once I figured that out, things looked better.
I deleted the ide disk definition so that only the sda scsi virtual disk pointing at my converted file was defined. I tried booting up ... the kernel boots but then cannot find anything. Well, this guest uses LVM for swap and "/". lets, try something simpler.
I next built a small (minimal install) Fedora 9 vmware guest with sda1, sda2, and sda3 as /boot, swap, and "/" respectively.. I took the vmdk file and converted it to raw. OK, plug this file into Fedora-virtualization as sda. First, boot up with the Fedora 9 netinst ISO image and I am able to "chroot /mnt/sysimage" to the system ... looks great. Try booking ... kernel; loads but fails because it cannot find anything such as "/dev/root", "/sys", or /selinux".
Any suggestions?
Gene
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Gene Czarcinski -
Mark McLoughlin -
Richard W.M. Jones