Converter for Linux

[mmartin0926]

Hello All,

I am trying to convert a Physical Linux machine to a VMWare Workstation VM.

It appears there is no Linux version of the converter in order to select "This Local Machine" as source... So I downloaded this onto windows box. But, when selecting Remote Machine as the source, my only option as a destination is a ESXi vSphere server. If you choose local machine you can select a external HDD, but not for remote linux machine.??

I saw just searching online that there used to be a VMWare Converter 4.0 for Linux, which was a tar file. Is there anyway to still get this older installer for Linux? Found here: https://linhost.info/2009/04/vmware-converter-installation-on-ubuntu-linux/

Or is there anyway to convert a remote physical linux machine to an External HDD..?

What are my options?

Thanks in Advance,

Matt

[continuum]

Converter can only handle Linux Imports when the target type is ESXi / vSphere.
So you need to use an ESXi - at least temporary.
The older versions worked the same way - without an ESXi host as target importing a Linux machine is / was impossible.

[mmartin0926]

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated... Well, that disappointing.

My manager who runs the ESXi server didn't want to allocate 300 GBs for my VM... Is there a way to then export that VM after its been created in ESXi?

Or, is there another non-vmware application way to do this?

Lastly, my Linux machine is part of a Dual-Boot laptop. Linux and Windows 7... Would it be possible to run the converter on the entire local disk from the Windows partition and have it include the Linux partition as well? Would something like that be possible? I'm not really worried about the Windows 7 part of this. The main goal is to get the Linux Partitions.

-Matt

[continuum]

> Is there a way to then export that VM after its been created in ESXi?
Yes - once the VM is created you can download it and run it in Workstation.
> Would it be possible to run the converter on the entire local disk from the Windows partition and have it include the Linux partition as well?
Yes - but that would not help with the task to reconfigure the Linux drivers and initial ramdisk.
So your best option is to temporarily use an ESXi as target and let Converter do the reconfiguration for you.
Then once that is done you can move the VM to Workstation.