[RndTbl] libvirt, vmware, and Windows 2000

Sun Feb 5 14:26:16 CST 2023

I've been using SolusVM for a while. Originally I picked it because it 
integrates with WHMCS but have not been leveraging that. It helped a lot 
in that it does the dirty work and then I can look under the hood at the 
XML etc and learn more about how to use libvirt CLI. The result is I can 
do a few things in libvirt and then import into SolusVM and have a 
properly managed VM. (In most cases.)

On 2023-02-05 07:50, Adam Thompson wrote:
> Kinda orthogonal to the original problem, but if you want to run KVM
> VMs on a remote headless machine, I quite strongly recommend using a
> canned system for doing that such as ProxmoxVE (PVE) or similar, and
> not relying on the traditional libvirt CLI tooling.  If you don't like
> PVE, there are quite a few other projects that accomplish much the
> same ends.
> -Adam
> 
> Get Outlook for Android [1]
> -------------------------
> 
> From: Roundtable <roundtable-bounces at muug.ca> on behalf of Scott
> Toderash <scott at 100percenthelpdesk.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 5, 2023 6:44:17 AM
> To: Continuation of Round Table discussion <roundtable at muug.ca>
> Subject: Re: [RndTbl] libvirt, vmware, and Windows 2000
> 
> I had done steps very similar to yours.
> 
> qemu-img convert -O raw S1\ -\ Production-0.vmdk
> /dev/vg_vmhost9/kvm140_img
> 
> virt-install --name kvm140 --memory 4096 --vcpus 2 --disk
> /dev/vg_vmhost9/kvm140_img,bus=ide --import --network default
> --os-variant win2k
> 
> Initially I had tried using bus=sata and that was not bootable. IDE
> made
> the C: accessible but I wonder if I need more parameters to map out
> the
> other drives.
> 
> The virt-install was helpful to help me generate a decent XML file and
> 
> then I tweaked it a bit from there.
> 
> On first boot it went through the old "Windows found new hardware"
> thing, which I had completely forgot about. It couldn't find any
> drivers
> of course, so oh well. It's possible that without having installed
> virtio drivers before I got my snapshot it isn't going to work but I"m
> 
> not sure about that.
> 
> Then I thought I should be able to fire up vmware player and boot the
> vmdk image. Then I discovered that running player on a remote headless
> 
> machine is a real hassle. It seems possible but I haven't actually got
> 
> it working yet.
> 
> On 2023-02-04 11:36, Chris Audet wrote:
>> @Scott Haven't worked much with Win 2000, thankfully.
>> 
>> Tried to reproduce your problem in my lab by installing Win 2000
>> Professional on ESXI, adding a bunch of virtual HDDs using FAT or
> NTFS
>> with basic or dynamic disks (trying to see if some combination
> caused
>> it to fail), downloading the VMDK files, converting to qcow2, and
>> importing into Proxmox.
>> 
>> However wasn't able to make it past the converting VMDK to qcow2
> step.
>>  I must've messed up somewhere because after importing the disks
> into
>> Proxmox I just get a Windows "boot drive inaccessible" error.
>> 
>> Sadly I didn't take many notes while experimenting with all this,
> but
>> if you end up finding a solution I'd be very curious to learn it.
>> 
>> The only part that stuck out to me while doing this is that when
>> initializing new disks on Win 2000 it seemed to default to dynamic
>> disks, and was trying to build a software raid by default.  I'm not
>> sure if this would be a factor with your disk conversion - but I can
>> see how if the disks are configured as a raid but "qemu-img convert"
>> is handling the disks one at a time it could have strange results.
>> 
>> bash-5.1$ qemu-img convert -p -f vmdk -O qcow2 Chris_Win2000.vmdk
>> Chris_Win2000.qcow2
>>  (100.00/100%)
>> bash-5.1$ qemu-img convert -p -f vmdk -O qcow2 Chris_Win2000_1.vmdk
>> Chris_Win2000_1.qcow2
>>  (100.00/100%)
>> bash-5.1$ qemu-img convert -p -f vmdk -O qcow2 Chris_Win2000_2.vmdk
>> Chris_Win2000_2.qcow2
>>  (100.00/100%)
>> bash-5.1$ qemu-img convert -p -f vmdk -O qcow2 Chris_Win2000_3.vmdk
>> Chris_Win2000_3.qcow2
>>  (100.00/100%)
>> root at MGV7091:~# qm importdisk 102 Chris_Win2000.qcow2 local-lvm
>> root at MGV7091:~# qm importdisk 102 Chris_Win2000_1.qcow2 local-lvm
>> root at MGV7091:~# qm importdisk 102 Chris_Win2000_2.qcow2 local-lvm
>> root at MGV7091:~# qm importdisk 102 Chris_Win2000_3.qcow2 local-lvm
>> https://ostechnix.com/import-qcow2-into-proxmox/
>> https://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/convert-images.html
>> 
>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 12:47 PM Scott Toderash
>> <scott at 100percenthelpdesk.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> If the subject line doesn't scare you then maybe you can help me
> out
>>> 
>>> with this one. Windows 2000 is its own punishment at this point,
> but
>>> 
>>> it's part of the mission in this case.
>>> 
>>> I have a working Windows 2000 server running on VMWare esxi. I
>>> downloaded the image as a vmdk file and attempted to import it into
>>> my
>>> Linux system as a KVM image. It mostly works.
>>> 
>>> I did this successfully with 2 other machines that were Windows
>>> 2012R2
>>> from the same source and same destination. Those work.
>>> 
>>> W2k is having issues because it has C: E: and F: but only C: is
>>> recognized when I boot it up in the new environment. It shows that
>>> E:
>>> exists but it believes that it is corrupted.
>>> 
>>> There are probably some parameters that I don't know about that I
>>> need
>>> to pass in order to make this work.
>>> 
>>> The general process was download the vmdk image, use "qemu-img
>>> convert"
>>> to make a raw file and then try to boot that. I tried using
>>> virt-install
>>> and I tried some other manual config methods but this is as far as
> I
>>> 
>>> have been able to get.
>>> 
>>> Does anyone here have experience with this sort of scenario?
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Roundtable at muug.ca
>>> https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable
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