virtualising an existing Linux system

[Karl Auer]

Hi there.

A few weeks ago I was asking questions about virtualising an existing
Linux system, so that it could run under, for example, VirtualBox. A few
people gave me good pointers, and today I finally got my old server
virtualised.

The process was somewhat complexificated by me first having to resize a
partition on the source machine. Anyway, the info from people here
regarding gparted was invaluable (BTW, I resized from 80GB down to 10GB
in one step and it worked fine). This page was the key to actually doing
the virtualisation:

http://www.localizingjapan.com/blog/2011/03/05/virtualizing-a-linux-system-creating-a-linux-vm-p2v/

A few notes though:

- I didn't use partimage, I used dd to take images of partitions, and to
write them back. partimage might have been faster, I don't know. I did
try to use partimage, but apparently it *requires* a compressed image.
Mine was raw, and partimage coredumped when fed it.

- I was virtualising a 7.04 system, so grub (as per that link above) was
the way to go. It may be that if you are virtualising other systems, you
might have to handle the boot loader differently.

- next time, I will run shredder or something over the partitions, so
that empty blocks are filled with a pattern. This would allow good
compression. As it was, the empty blocks still had the remnants of
whatever data had been in them last, so the partition images did not
compress well.

- the job is not quite finished, but so far no showstoppers.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer/                   +61-428-957160 (mob)

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