Can’t boot VM after P2V or ghost – Linux 2.6

bootboot-loaderphysical-to-virtualtroubleshootingvirtual-machines

I got this old machine that runs on a p2 400 and a Linux Debian 3.1 with kernel 2.6.8 and since it has modified binaries due to internal undocumented changes in the code, migrating off manually isn't an option, so I was trying to P2V this box with VMWare Converter and had no luck.

The P2V resulted in a VM that hangs on a black screen but I can get it to boot off a LiveCD like CloneZilla. I tried in this order :

  • Recreated grub config
  • tried various SCSI BUSes in the VM config
  • Ghosted the physical machine to restore it on the virtual machine, same result

Is it normal that a bootable CD can see the disks but not the virtual BIOS?

Any idea what could cause this and how to solve? could it have to do with the fact the machine is based off IDE HDDs and that the virtual machine uses scsi/sata?

Thanks

Best Answer

ghost the physical machine (centos 6) with symantec ghost32==>image file my.gho

convert this imge fine to vmdk with with symantec ghost32 : ghost32 -clone,mode=restore,src=my.gho,dst=myimage.vmdk -batch -sure

on vmware workstation verion 11 create a vm linux centos use existing disk (myimage.vmdk) type IDE(not scsi) boot the vm ok

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