Re: [PLUG] Virtualize a bare metal machine

Anthony Martin

Jr Linux System Administrator

(M) 609-410-1168
anthony.j.martin142@gmail.com

On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 10:12 PM, Michael Leone <turgon@mike-leone.com> wrote:

VMware Converter is still a separate utility, works standalone or as client-server. I have used it Many times for Windows, and have also used it once or twice for Red Hat.

On Sunday, June 7, 2015, JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org> wrote:
After all this great info I sort-of hate to even go here, but... VMware
use to have a separate "VMware Converter" product that did this, live,
over-the-wire, while the Windows machine was running, even to a Linux
host. They called it P2V for physical-to-virtual. Then they merged it
into a product, Workstation maybe? I
m not seeing the option in my Workstation 10 install, but maybe:
https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=converter.

I used the current flavor at the time to do a P2V for and XP a few times
and as I recall it was trivial and worked well. HOWEVER, I've had a lot
less success using VMware P2V for Linux. That I used to do via LiveCDs
and rsync, but I haven't had to do that since 2013 or so.

So I offer the above with the full understanding that Keith's solution
has far more "geek cred" than mine. ;-)

As an aside, Windows refugees might like to check out Linux Mint. I
switched my Mom and Aunt from XP to Mint and they basically can't tell
the difference.

On 06/07/2015 08:42 PM, Roque Lachica Jr wrote:
> Think of it as a " bridge" presentation for Windows refugees like
> myself. Even an intro. for Linux / Windows augmentation.
>
> I'll be there.
>
> On Jun 7, 2015 8:29 PM, "Keith C. Perry" <kperry@daotechnologies.com
> <mailto:kperry@daotechnologies.com>> wrote:
>
> I never thought to offer it to PLUG since it was more Windows
> related but I could do in the late summer or early fall if there is
> interest.
>
> ---
> KP-
>
> On Jun 7, 2015 8:09 PM, "Eric H. Johnson" <ejohnson@camalytics.com
> <mailto:ejohnson@camalytics.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Keith et al,
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks for all the good information. Sounds like a PLUG talk to me. J
> >
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Eric
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > My apologizes that email accidentally got sent before I could
> finish it... restarting-
> >
> >
> >
> > ~ ~ ~
> >
> > I had offered a talk on this to PACS but the procedure I for
> Virtualizing windows on Linux also provides clean way of imaging a
> Windows box which is especially critical to protection from
> Ransomware. Since the image is portable it is valid for
> virtualization use as well as bare metal installations.
> >
> > The high level points are that you need two tools:
> > 1) qemu-img (Linux)
> > 2) sysprep (Windows)
> >
> > You will also need a storage location to store the file the VM
> file that is produced.
> >
> >
> >
> > Fortunately for WinXP the procedure might be slightly less
> complicated. I'll give you all the steps first and then point out
> where you might save time.
> >
> >
> >
> > Boot into Windows and use sysprep to create an
> out-of-box-experience - open a command prompt and run sysprep from
> the system32\sysprep folder of your $systemroot (which is normally
> c:\windows. When the dialog box comes up choose the one say says
> "OOBE". You should also check "Generalize". For "Shutdown Options"
> you should choose "Shutdown". The first time you do this you should
> not get any errors. Subsequent runs however will require setting
> setting two registry keys which reset the OOBE counter. I don't
> have that in front of me right now but its out there on the internet
> but I can email you the .reg file I created to do this if you can't
> find it.
> > Boot into a Linux live cd with qemu-img to create the VM disk
> file - This is a matter of preference but in my case, I have usb
> disk installs of Lubuntu and Slax that I use. As long as you have
> network access you use whatever you want and then get a repository
> package that has the qemu-img program. In the Ubuntu world that is
> "qemu-utils". You will need to have the storage location for the VM
> image available. The most time efficient way to do this is by
> connecting a USB drive with enough space but you also stream this
> over the network to a location as well (i.e. via SSH). Keep in mind
> that this is the slowest part of the process. There are ways to
> accelerate that I will mention later. This is also space intensive
> and will consume at least the amount of space you have in use on
> your file systems. For USB, mount your storage and do something
> like "qemu-img convert -O qcow2 /dev/sda /mnt/my_pc.qcow". In this
> case, /dev/sda is the windows disk and my USB drive is mounted to /mnt
> >
> >
> >
> > When this completes you will have a .qcow2 VM image. To test it,
> I would create a clone (i.e. a copy of the VM pointing to this file
> as a backing images, see the qemu-img help) and bring it up. You'll
> have to go through the windows set up. You'll have to create a
> another user (I just call it sysprep) and when you are done and log
> off, you will see your others account(s). You and log into them as
> they will be intact. You can delete the sysprep account. The
> beauty of this is that when done, you can just delete the clone.
> Your image remains intact and be used over and over again.
> >
> >
> >
> > To burn this into bare-metal you would boot from your live cd
> again, connect your storage and use the qemu-img convert facility to
> write the image out in the "raw" format to the disk you want.
> >
> >
> >
> > To accelerate the process you can use dd to capture your boot
> sectors and then use ntfsprogs to create a clone of your windows
> drives. This is much faster but because the rebuild has more steps
> I don't like to use it here.
> >
> >
> >
> > I've use this for my Windows 7 Home Premium netbook. Which also
> has 2 Linux partitions. This process protects everything. So even
> though its 185Gb, I can sleep well knowing that my netbook can be
> destroyed and nothing is lost. In fact, I have it up in
> virtualization now so I could look at my Windows side instructions
> again. For Win XP, I have done this procedure without using sysprep
> but I don't know if it is always 100% reliable. We are talking
> about Windows after all. With Windows 2000 it was so I suspect it
> might work in XP but your mileage my vary.

___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
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___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug