[virt-tools-list] what does virt-v2v check for in a multiboot os?

[Kenneth Armstrong]

Thanks Rich,

I tried this again and it still failed.  This is a single vmdk disk
with two partitions.  I deleted out the second partition (that didn't
have anything on it) and it worked.  However, i have other vm's to
import that I can't delete out the second partition, so that isn't
ideal.

I was looking through the virt-v2v script itself (this is on RHEL 6)
and noticed that it was supposed to run the inspection before it
creates the target vm image (I'm no PERL guy, but that's what I got
from the script).  However, when I run the utitlity, it goes through
the whole process of creating the target vm (which took about 2.5
hours on my last try) and then failed because "multiboot operating
systems are not supported by virt-v2v."

Could the utility be changed to check that before it tries to convert
it?  That would save a lot of time from being wasted by a process that
won't work.

-Kenny

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:02:21AM -0500, Kenneth Armstrong wrote:
>> I've been trying to use virt-v2v to convert a Windows Server 2003 VM.
>> This VM was one that was converted to a VMWare image that apparently
>> had a previous Windows installation on it that is no longer being
>> used.  However, I keep getting the message:
>>
>> virt-v2v: multiboot operating systems are not supported by virt-v2v
>>
>> So I followed the instructions here:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/888023
>>
>> Rebooted, ran virt-v2v again and got the same error message.
>>
>> So, next I installed the Recovery Console, ran fixboot to write a new
>> bootsector and tried again, got the same error message.
>>
>> Figuring that virt-v2v sees the Recovery Console as a new OS, I then
>> followed these instructions for deleting the recovery console here:
>> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216417
>>
>> I then used an ISO image to boot my VMWare image and ran the Recovery
>> Console that way, again running the fixboot command.  I am now
>> attempting the virt-v2v process again.  It sucks though because it
>> takes 3 hours over a fast gigabit network to do the transfer, and the
>> image is only a 45G disk image that is using the thin provisioned
>> VMWare disk format.
>
> None of this is going to help.  It's not a problem with the MBR.
>
>> I'll follow up with how this new run goes, but what is virt-v2v
>> checking for as another OS?  I would have liked to keep the Recovery
>> Console installed, as it is something rather handy on a Windows
>> server.
>
> virt-v2v uses libguestfs inspection to determine which operating
> system(s) are installed in the guest.  If libguestfs finds multiple
> file systems, each containing a Windows %systemroot% directory, then
> it will think the guest is multiboot.
>
> You can find out precisely what libguestfs thinks by using
> 'virt-inspector' on the guest:
>
>  http://libguestfs.org/virt-inspector.1.html
>
> But note:
>
> Since we rewrote virt-inspector, there are two different versions
> found in the wild and they use completely different codebases.
>
> If you are using RHEL 5.x or 6.0 then you have the old version -- good
> because the old version is what virt-v2v always uses.  If you are
> using the RHEL 6.1 preview packages then both versions are available:
> 'virt-inspector' for the old version and 'virt-inspector2' for the new
> version.  If you are using Fedora >= 13, then 'virt-inspector' is the
> new version and the old version is not packaged.
>
> Rich.
>
> --
> Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
> virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines.  Tiny program with many
> powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc.
> http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top
>