Convert CentOS 5 machine to VMware Player image

[Geoff]

I have an old physical machine I want to get rid off, however the system on it still has some useful data I might need to refer to occasionally. I want to disk image this machine then restore it to a VMware player host so I can keep it around and boot it up if I ever need to. That was the plan anyway. I've tried doing it with Clonezilla but no joy. The system hangs on bootup. I've fixed the grub menu.lst and the fstab and I've also booted into the system from SysRescueCD and chrooted and rebuild the initrd. So any other suggestions would be welcome.

[ZeroHour]

Have you tried VMware vCenter Converter, Convert Physical Machines to Virtual Machines ?

Seems like it will do what you want.

[jinnantonnixx]

Is it the X11 driver stopping it? Or is it a non-GUI machine?

 

I'd use a P2V rather than a disk image; there's probably some hardware configuration stopping it from working.

 

If you can't P2V it, I'd rebuild the Centos on the target virtual platform then copy the /etc and /home (and any s/w installs you might find in /usr/bin, local etc).

 

P2V of Linux Servers with VMware Converter BootCD

[Geoff]

It's not getting that far. Like I said it's failing to find its root partition.

 

mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys: No such file or directory
switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

 

I'll give VMware Converter a go.

[Geoff]

I am unable to download the P2V BootCD.

[Geoff]

Clonezilla restore worked the second time round. Forgot to change the VMware disk from SCSI to IDE on the first attempt.