[GRLUG] VirtualBox question

[Bill Littlejohn]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 11:40 AM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org>wrote:

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

I'm installing V.B. on another pc right, and I'll be back shortly.
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