virtualising an existing Linux system

[Smokin Chevy]

I virtualized a physical Redhat 7.3 to vSphere.  I didn't resize partitions
though.  I did mine simply with cloning with Acronis.  Worse that I had to
do was rewrite grub wich takes less then 60 seconds...But that may have been
due to my source had a few bad sectors.

-Jeff



On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 7:19 AM, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:

> 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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