converting VDI to IMG

[Girish]

I'm so close to moving away from VrtualBox to using Qemu. However I've run into some issues converting my existing virtual machine from VirtualBox to Qemu. I'm running Qemu on Fedora 16. I took my windows_xp.vdi and tried to convert it to qemu. The conversion goes well without any errors but then when I import the converted file to Qemu, it won't start. Here is the info on the file that I'm trying to convert:

INFO
=====
$ qemu-img info windows_xp.vdi
image: windows_xp.vdi
file format: vdi
virtual size: 21G (22020096000 bytes)
disk size: 9.4G
cluster_size: 1048576

CONVERT COMMAND
==================
qemu-img convert windows_xp.vdi windows_xp.img

I created a new virtual machine and used the converted machine created (from the above step).

When I try to start the newly created virtual machine, it keeps failing. There is a blue screen of death that goes away too soon. and I'm stuck with the windows start menu "safe mode, start normally " etc.. but no matter what I do I can't seem to start the vm.

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

[Stefan Weil (ubuntu-weilnetz)]

Which version of QEMU do you use?
You can run QEMU with the original (=vdi) image (and use -snapshot, then QEMU won't write to the image), too.

A Windows blue screen or a start menu is a clear indication that the image conversion was successful.
Therefore I assume that this is not a QEMU related problem but a Windows problem.

Windows does not like when you move installation images from one machine to another
one with different hardware. That's what you do when you move from VirtualBox to QEMU.

[Stefan Hajnoczi (stefanha)]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 02:13:01PM -0000, Stefan Weil wrote:
> Which version of QEMU do you use?
> You can run QEMU with the original (=vdi) image (and use -snapshot, then QEMU won't write to the image), too.
>
> A Windows blue screen or a start menu is a clear indication that the image conversion was successful.
> Therefore I assume that this is not a QEMU related problem but a Windows problem.
>
> Windows does not like when you move installation images from one machine to another
> one with different hardware. That's what you do when you move from VirtualBox to QEMU.

It's worth adding that there are guides on migrating from one
virtualization solution to another (sometimes called "v2v"). With
Windows it is especially painful but can be done if you prepare the
image ahead of time with the appropriate registry changes, drivers, etc.

Search around for information on migrating. Here's info from VMware to
KVM but the process should be similar for vbox too:
http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox_VE#VMware_to_Proxmox_VE_.28KVM.29

Or you could try out virt-v2v (from what I can tell it's still under
active development and maybe a little early to use it):
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2011-December/msg00061.html

Or simply install a fresh VM under QEMU and move the data files over if
migrating seems like too much work.

Stefan

[Stefan Weil (ubuntu-weilnetz)]

I close this bug report because it is a Windows feature, not a QEMU bug.