[Libguestfs] Trying to get started with virt-p2v

[Greg Scott]

As promised...results so far.  

I built up a Fedora 14 VM and did "yum install virt-v2v".  This
downloaded and installed a bazillion dependencies and ran successfully
to completion.  Next, I did "virt-p2v-image-builder".  This downloaded
and installed a bunch more stuff and successfully ran to completion.
And it created an ISO file named /home/gregs/virt-p2v.iso.  So far so
good.

I burned the ISO to a CD, brought it over to a test PC and booted it.
The boot hangs in a blue colored Fedora screen and just stops.  OK, that
PC is an old piece of junk Dell Optiplex.  But it's been good enough to
run Windows for several years.  

Trying again on my much nicer Lenovo laptop - this time it boots into
the virt-p2v screen.  It shows me that eth0 is connected after I finally
plugged in the cable.  And then it rebooted?!?

Ahh - I see what I did wrong.  I always hit ESC when Fedora boots cuz I
want to see what's going on.  Plus, I didn't have the Ethernet cable
connected.  The laptop rebooted, this time it came to the "Connect to
conversion server" screen.

So now I think I'm ready to try a test with a real server.  

- Greg Scott



-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Scott 
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 8:10 AM
To: 'Richard W.M. Jones'
Cc: libguestfs at redhat.com; mbooth at redhat.com
Subject: RE: [Libguestfs] Trying to get started with virt-p2v

Thanks Rich.  I'm buried today but I will try with F14 and post the
results here.

- Greg


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard W.M. Jones [mailto:rjones at redhat.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 7:28 AM
To: Greg Scott
Cc: libguestfs at redhat.com; mbooth at redhat.com
Subject: Re: [Libguestfs] Trying to get started with virt-p2v

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 10:10:38AM -0500, Greg Scott wrote:
> I need to p2v migrate a Windows server and I am soooo confused!

I've updated the web site here:

http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v/

> By now, I've done a few virt-v2v migrations, so I get how that works.
I
> attended Richard and Matthew's Red Hat Summit talk about virt-p2v and
> just now downloaded the handouts.  
> 
> If I understand what's going on, virt-p2v is pretty much the same as
> virt-v2v, except that the physical system to migrate from needs to
boot
> from a live CD, so that virt-v2v can connect to it.  OK, makes sense.

> 
> How do I get my hands on an ISO of this live CD?

You have to build it yourself using 'virt-p2v-image-builder'.

NOTE #1: Since Fedora 15 started to use systemd and this deeply
changes the way live images work, and since Matt has not tested this,
it's best to stick with Fedora 14 for now.  Running F14 from a VM is
sufficient to build the ISO.

NOTE #2: When we finally release this for RHEL 6.2, we will ship a
prebuilt ISO to customers from RHN.  Fedora users and others (Debian
etc) will still need to run virt-p2v-image-builder.

> Matthew's handout points to a new RPM called virt-p2v-image-builder.
I
> see there's a Fedora 15 flavor of this RPM - but it has a bunch of
> dependencies.  So I built up a Fedora 15 VM running as a guest on a
RHEL
> 6.1 system.  From inside my Fedora 15 VM, I do yum install
> virt-v2v-image-builder. This installs cleanly and takes care of
> dependencies.  
> 
> Great, so now what?
>
> I found a script - /usr/bin/virt-v2v-image-builder and ran it (but
first
> must chmod 755 to make it work).  This ran for a while and sat there
> like a bump on a log.  After a while, I tried ctrl/C but nothing
> happened.  So I did CTRL/Z and then kill -9 all the subprocesses it
> created.  I tried again, doing sh -v ./virt-v2v-image-builder this
time
> so I could get a feel for what was happening.  It ran through a bunch
of
> code and eventually blew up with an error, "Failed to find package -
> 'Rubygenm-virt-p2v'". What in the world does this mean?
> 
> OK, clearly I don't know what I'm doing.  
> 
> man virt-p2v doesn't exist.
> 
> But I found some online documentation here:
> http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-p2v/virt-p2v.1.html

Please ignore this page.  It refers to the very old version which was
completely different.  In fact I have now made this page redirect to
the new site.

> This mentions a pre-built ISO on Richard's site, but following the
link,
> I see a warning that it's all being re-written.  And the link to the
ISO
> doesn't work.  There's another link on Richard's site that says all
the
> download info I need is in the handouts from Matthew's talk.  
> 
> But I went through Richard's talk and am having serious trouble trying
> to figure out how to use virt-v2v-image-builder.  I'm not seeing any
man
> pages for it and haven't found a writeup on how to use it.  
> 
> But why go to the trouble to build a unique live CD?  Maybe there's a
> new pre-built ISO available someplace?
> 
> I would definitely appreciate any guidance.

Matt may be able to help you with the other questions, but I'd
definitely suggest using Fedora 14 and building the ISO.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat
http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
software inside the virtual machine.  Supports Linux and Windows.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/