[et-mgmt-tools] VMware/qemu-kvm-?? migration
Gene Czarcinski
gene at czarc.net
Fri Jul 17 12:53:21 UTC 2009
On Thursday 16 July 2009 15:42:41 Gene Czarcinski wrote:
> > Is the right SCSI driver available in the initrd? You should be able
> > to find out what driver(s) are in the guest's initrd using
> > virt-inspector.
>
> Light bulb lights above head!
>
> Yup, yup ... thank you very much! The problem is that the needed drivers
> are not in the initrd file.
>
> Now I know what the problem is but "fixing" it will need some thought.
OK, I got a "fix" that worked and the problem definitely was that the initrd file
did not contain the right/needed drivers for the new hardware configuration.
First: The guest is an i386 F9 system. Although the VMware guest used a SCSI
adapter, I used a IDE adapter on qemu-kvm. I did not bother converting the
file but just used a copy of the vmdk file.
To get a good initrd file: Bootup the F9 i386 distribution DVD and run rescue
mode. Use scp to copy the "current" kernel and firmware rpms (the guest was
not up-to-date). chroot the the guest's disks. Install the kernel and
firmware rpms. Reboot to the updated guests ... everything works! Success!
Before installing a new kernel rpm to get the updated initrd file, I tried just
running mkinitrd for the rescue/chroot mode but this did not appear to
generate a correct initrd file (it did not work). I used:
mkinitrd /boot/initrd______.img <kernel_version>
Whatever "dance" installing a kernel does to create a good initrd file, just
running mkinitrd is not it. Any suggestions? It would be nice to just run
mkinitrd to fix things.
Q: Does virt-p2v fixup initrd as part of its process? [No, I have not tried it
yet]
Since guestfish gives me access to the filesystems on a virtual disk, it would
be nice if I could (easily) update the initrd to have the right drivers. This
may not be practical since guestfish does not know what the guest's hardware
configuration looks like ... running rescue-mod and chroot may be the best that
can be used to fix things.
Once I get the process down for migrating a Fedora guest from VMware to qemu-
kvm, I will then look into the far bigger challenge of (ugh) Windows.
Gene
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