libvirt users - Feb 2012 - Virtualizing a an old SuSE system

I'm in the midst of an attempt to convert an
old and rather large SuSE server (5 disks) into
a virsh loadable VM. Has anyone else dealt with
the issues of systems of this sort? I'm at the
moment trying to hand construct a machine xml
file for it. I managed to create one which would
load but not start.

I'd appreciate some pointers and can supply 
whatever info you'd like about what I am 
trying to do and what the dd'd image of the
system disk and other disks are like.

Not that they do have LVM's, although the boot
should be off a base partition that is not
in the LVM.

On 02/25/2012 07:42 PM, Dale Amon wrote:
> I'm in the midst of an attempt to convert an
> old and rather large SuSE server (5 disks) into
> a virsh loadable VM. Has anyone else dealt with
> the issues of systems of this sort? I'm at the
> moment trying to hand construct a machine xml
> file for it. I managed to create one which would
> load but not start.
Personally, rather than trying to hand-create XML, I've found it handy
to use virt-manager's ability to create a new machine XML description
around existing disk images.  That is, use virt-manager to create a new
VM, but instead of telling it to install the new machine from scratch,
you instead tell it to attach to the pre-existing storage of the
eventual guest, and the OS that is installed in that storage, and it
generates pretty good defaults for the XML that will then boot that guest.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake at redhat.com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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