P2V Linux boxes to VMware Virtual Machines

June 19, 2008

Here is a great write up by Chris Hahn. I also found some additional information on https://conshell.net/wiki/index.php/Linux_P2V

Linux P2V procedure

Required Software

Red Hat / Fedora Linux CD1 (any version)
VMware Converter 3.x / 4.x

Converting physical host to Virtual Machine

Convert physical machine to VM image using VMware Converter bootcd.

Virtual Machine Cleanup

When the conversion is complete, edit the properties of the virtual machine to remove unnecessary hardware

Take a Snapshot of the virtual machine before making any changes

Remove USB controllers, Serial ports, parallel ports, floppy drives
Change hard disk controller to LSI logic from Buslogic if VM is currently configured for Buslogic
Configure VM to boot from CD in VM bios before booting from hard disk

Connect Red Hat boot CD to VM. Select Connected and Connect at Power on
Boot up a machine with Redhat CD. You will be prompted to change the hard disk type to LSI Logic controller type if the disk controller was changed above. Accept this change

Confirm VM boots correctly after updates

VMware Tools

Open Virtual Machine console. Select Install/Upgrade VMware tools from the menu. Mount virtual cdrom with the following command

Mount /dev/hda/ /media/cdrom

(This command may be different depending on the version of Linux. The cdrom could be mounted under /dev/cdrom or somewhere else. The mount folder could also be /mnt/cdrom instead of /media/cdrom.)

Once the VMware tools CD is mounted, type rpm –i /media/cdrom/VMwareTools-xxxx.xxx.rpm (the xxx section will depend on the version of ESX, and the Linux platform. Just use tab autocomplete to get the exact filename)

Once the tools are installed run vmware-config-tools.pl. Follow the instructions to complete VMware Tools installation.

Happy P2V’ing!
– Carlo

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