arnaud gaboury
2014-May-15 09:34 UTC
[libvirt-users] convert physical windows 8 machine to virtual machine
I dual boot w8 and Arch Linux. Both are on the same ssd drive (each OS have of course a partition). Now I would like to virtualize w8 and run it inside Arch Linux using KVM/QEMU and Libvirt. w8 has already been installed on a ntfs partition. As it is brand new, it will not be difficult to reinstall it on a image.raw I have been reading some articles and found myself a little bit confused. 1- Some articles point to driver issues on the windows size, which could lead to an unusable OS. Is this a real issue ? Workaround found is to uninstall IDE/SATA driver in w8 and then install general/universal driver. 2- I can of course copy my w8 partition to a image.raw in my second HD, then create the VM. But in this case, after time, I will not have the same w8 on my ssd and my VM. What I am looking for is a VM that will ever replicate w8 on ssd. In this case, I guess I need to reinstall w8 on a raw qemu-img then use this image for the VM. Am I correct ? Is there anyother solution ? Is it worth keeping the raw image on the ssd for better performance,or moving the image to the other HD will make no difference? 3- Most of the reading talk about virtualise a physical windows using Virtualbox or VMware, which I certainly don't want. I would appreciate any good pointer for the overall set-up. Thank you in advance for hints, tips and advices.
Eric Blake
2014-May-15 12:01 UTC
Re: [libvirt-users] convert physical windows 8 machine to virtual machine
On 05/15/2014 03:34 AM, arnaud gaboury wrote:> I dual boot w8 and Arch Linux. Both are on the same ssd drive (each OS > have of course a partition). > Now I would like to virtualize w8 and run it inside Arch Linux using > KVM/QEMU and Libvirt. > w8 has already been installed on a ntfs partition. As it is brand new, > it will not be difficult to reinstall it on a image.rawThe virt-p2v project is your friend; http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v/ Be aware that you CANNOT have a windows partition that does both bare-metal booting and virtual booting without risking having to re-register your machine at practically every boot - Windows is highly sensitive to hardware changes, and the change between bare metal and virtual is significant. -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
arnaud gaboury
2014-May-15 12:31 UTC
Re: [libvirt-users] convert physical windows 8 machine to virtual machine
> > The virt-p2v project is your friend; http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v/Yes, it seems so. I came across some readings about this tool.> > Be aware that you CANNOT have a windows partition that does both > bare-metal booting and virtual booting without risking having to > re-register your machine at practically every bootHum hum, that's what I am trying to do. I found some .zip files to apply from w8 that will modify IDE/SATA drivers. Are these driver changes not enough ?
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