Physical to Virtual (p2v) disk migration for VMWare

Here's what I did for a Redhat 9 machine. Maybe you can adapt it?

Migrating a Linux Machine to VMWare ESX

Before the Linux image is ghosted, the BusLogic scsi driver must be either loaded
into the kernel at boot or compiled into a new kernel. Many Linux installations use
a two-stage boot process, consisting of an "initrd" (i.e., initial RAM disk) followed
by the normal boot process. The initial RAM disk is used to load drivers, etc.,
into the kernel before switching to the root disk.

Note: In VMWare Workstation 4.0, the linux VM uses initrd to load the BusLogic scsi
module, as well as scsi support modules. So, we follow the same process in ESX.
To check what loadable modules have been loaded into the kernel:

lsmod

Check for initrd by displaying the contents of the bootloader:

more /etc/grub.conf
more /etc/lilo.conf

Example grub configuration: (all paths are relative from /boot)

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-8.img
(end example)

According to the grub configuration, on boot an initial RAM disk image is being
used before passing control to the root ide or scsi disk. The contents of the RAM
disk consists of whatever is in "initrd-2.4.20-8.img". There is a procedure to
check the image file's contents, which we will explore later.

If the initrd line is not in the grub or lilo configuration then check for two things:
Go to the /boot directory and "more config-2.4.20-8" and look for
- CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM=Y
- CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD=Y

If the two lines cannot be found it means that RAM disk and initrd support were not
compiled into the kernel. This means you must compile scsi support into a new kernel -
you cannot load them into the kernel at boot.

If the two lines are present, but the initrd line is missing from the grub or lilo
configuration, then an initrd image file has to be generated using mkinitrd or
something similar.

Back to the initrd image file. Hack into it by:

cd /boot
gzip -dc initrd-2.4.20-8.img >/tmp/initrd.ext2
mkdir /mnt/initrd
mount -o loop /tmp/initrd.ext2 /mnt/initrd
cd /mnt/initrd
ls

There should be a directory structure and a file called "linuxrc". "linuxrc" will
load device drivers, etc., from the initial root disk (i.e., the RAM disk). To add
BusLogic scsi support, the following lines should be added to "linuxrc".

echo "Loading scsi_mod.o module"
insmod /lib/scsi_mod.o
echo "Loading sd_mod.o module"
insmod /lib/sd_mod.o
echo "Loading BusLogic.o module"
insmod /lib/BusLogic.o

The object "o" files must be copied into the "lib" directory.

cd /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/scsi
cp BusLogic.o /mnt/initrd/lib
cp scsi_mod.o /mnt/initrd/lib
cp sd_mod.o /mnt/initrd/lib

Unmount /mnt/initrd. The changes/additions will be saved in /tmp/initrd.ext2.

umount /mnt/initrd

Compress a new image. Rename the existing image, first!

cd /boot
mv initrd-2.4.20-8.img initrd-2.4.20-8.img.old
gzip -c /tmp/initrd.ext2 > /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img

The linux server can now be ghosted. Before you ghost make sure the Linux server is
not booting into X Server. Change the bootlevel to "3" by modifying /etc/inittab.

After ghosting the image into an ESX VM, Linux will not reboot properly because the
bootloader has been overwritten. Follow this procedure to repair a grub
bootloader.

1) Boot from Linux disk1 and type "linux rescue"
2) Select all defaults, then you will receive a message saying:
"If you would like to make your system the root environment, run the command:
chroot /mnt/sysimage"
Go ahead and do that.
3) You can use "grub-install /dev/hda", but when going from ide to scsi, the device
names will change. The following can be used instead.

grub
grub> root (hd0,0)
(the first partition (0) of your first hard disk (hd0) )
(you should see a message as follows: Filesystem type is Ext2fs, partition type is 0x83)
grub> setup (hd0,0)
(This will install grub in the MBR of the first hard disk)
grub> quit

Reboot the machine.

Linux should now boot in the VM. (The BusLogic scsi driver will load via initrd).
KUDZU will activate and prompt you to remove drivers that are no longer needed.
Go ahead and remove them.

When going from ide to scsi, some device links may get broken.
For example, when installing the VMWare Tools, you may receive a message saying,
"the special device /dev/cdrom does not exist". In this case, do the following:

dmesg | grep CD

It will tell you what the CD is linked to, say "hda" in this case. Create a new link.

ln -s /dev/hda /dev/cdrom

(the correct permissions for the CD device is "brw-r--r--")

Now the CD should be available.

Try to stay away from the X Windows environment until you get the VMWare Tools installed.

**See page 40 of the VMWare Administration Guide for installing VMWare Tools**

To get the Linux VM to work with DHCP:

To work around this problem, become root (su -) and use a text editor to edit the
following files in the guest operating system. If only one of these files exist,
then make the change for that file only.

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth[n]
/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth[n]

where, in both cases, [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter -- for example, eth0.

Add the following section to each of these two files:


check_link_down () {
return 1;
}

Then, run the command ifup eth[n] (where [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter) or
restart the guest operating system.

To change the hostname: "file://\\Bertha\source\VMWare\ESX\TreePad\861.mht"

To change the IP address:
"file://\\Bertha\source\VMWare\ESX\TreePad\Re_ IP address editing.txt"

NOTE: There may be more issues to resolve down the road...