<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:40 AM, John-Thomas Richards <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jtr@jrichards.org">jtr@jrichards.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 10:57:48AM -0500, Bill Littlejohn wrote:<br>
> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 10:18 AM, John-Thomas Richards <<a href="mailto:jtr@jrichards.org">jtr@jrichards.org</a>>wrote:<br>
><br>
</div>[snip]<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d">> > > No, booting from a live cd isn't necessary. That's just a simple way to<br>
> > get<br>
> > > the bootloader and the restore partition onto the second drive without<br>
> > > worrying too much about partition tables and boot loaders.<br>
> > > When I did this, I setup the disk more or less how I thought the restore<br>
> > > expected the disk to look like.<br>
> > > I copied the bootloader and the restore partition to the target drive,<br>
> > and<br>
> > > had a a second partition there just so the number of partitions was<br>
> > right.<br>
> > > The restore isn't likely to ask anything and will put everything on the<br>
> > > second partition. That worked out fine in my case.<br>
> > > Can you tell me how big those partitions are, how much space is<br>
> > available,<br>
> > > and where you want to put your new VM?<br>
> > > Bill<br>
> ><br>
> > me@rondo:~$ df -h<br>
> > Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on<br>
> > /dev/sda3 28G 9.8G 17G 38% /<br>
> > /dev/sda4 108G 65G 38G 64% /home<br>
<br>
</div>I forgot to include:<br>
<br>
/dev/sda1 11G 6.0G 4.6G 57% /media/vista<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> > The VM would go into /home/me.<br>
> ><br>
> > Would it work to make an .iso out of the partition? I can install from<br>
> > an .iso in VB.<br>
> > --<br>
> > john-thomas<br>
> ><br>
><br>
</div><div class="Ih2E3d">> I have no idea about the ISO, I would not think that would work.<br>
> Virtualbox can boot a raw partition, so it's possible to do something like<br>
> this<br>
> <a href="http://mesbalivernes.blogspot.com/2008/01/virtual-box-booting-from-existing.html" target="_blank">http://mesbalivernes.blogspot.com/2008/01/virtual-box-booting-from-existing.html</a><br>
<br>
</div>This seems to be for creating a VM out of an existing installation -<br>
creating a VM out of a partition used in dual-booting. That is not what<br>
I want to do. I do not have my system set up for dual-booting (nor do I<br>
want to do so).<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> but that kind of thing seems kludgy and dangerous to me.<br>
> What you really need to do is get the restore partition and bootloader on to<br>
> a second drive, be it virtual or physical, and boot that in the VM. 38GB of<br>
> free space doesn't leave much room for playing around though.<br>
<br>
</div>I'm confused about why I need to move the partition into another<br>
partition (on a USB drive). Is it so it has a bootloader? Can I not<br>
install a bootloader into the restore partition and accomplish the same<br>
thing? (Perhaps my ignorance is showing here...) The restore partition<br>
would only be used to install the VM and then it could be removed (at<br>
the least unmounted).<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> If you have a spare drive large enough to copy your existing drive into,<br>
> then you can attach that to the VM and boot the VM using a live CD ISO,<br>
> repartition the drive to turn sda2,sda3,sda4 into one ntfs partition, reboot<br>
> the VM without the live cd and run the restore, then when it's all done and<br>
> youv'e successfully booted the restored OS, shrink the OS partition as small<br>
> as practical (and obviously somewhat <38GB).<br>
> After all that you'll have a working VM, and all you have to do is convert<br>
> the physical drive into a virtual one and change the VM config to use the<br>
> new virtual disk.<br>
> I may be wrong, but other methods seems to get rather complicated rather<br>
> quickly.<br>
> This of course all hinges on having another 130GB+ drive laying around.<br>
<br>
</div>Why would I repartition sda2-4 into one ntfs partition? I don't want to<br>
get rid of my Linux install. I just want to boot the restore partition<br>
via VirtualBox to create a VM of the factory install of my laptop, after<br>
which I can delete the restore partition and continue running Debian as<br>
my operating system, booting <gulp> the Vista VM as needed.<br>
<font color="#888888">--<br>
john-thomas<br>
------<br>
All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple<br>
maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each<br>
other only in degree.<br>
Lysander Spooner, lawyer (1808-1887)<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br>Apologies for being unclear.<br>I essentially meant to make a copy of your existing disk, and then to modify those partitions. In the end having a single (restored) OS in a VM, no dual-boot.<br>
I also did not mean to confuse the issue by sending something mildly related, that was only to provide that Virtualbox can boot a partition and some associated commands that may help shed some light.<br><br>I'm installing V.B. on another pc right, and I'll be back shortly.<br>