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Daisychick
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ubuntu p2v - converter fails generic error

Hello,

I'm new to vmware and I'm trying to teach myself. I have ubuntu 11.10 running on a spare laptop with linux converter server 4.0.1. I have the Converter Standalone Client 4.0.1 installed on a windows 7 machine. I have an ESXi server cluster running 4.1.0 that I'm a superadmin on. I'm trying to use the windows machine to convert the ubuntu machine from physical to virtual. I go the through the wizard and everything looks fine. I click start, it starts, and then stops and disconnects with a very generic error "Error: Unable to create the virtual machine 'ubuntu-test-machine'." no other reason given.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Either documentation is limited or my googling needs work because I'm having a hard time finding info on this. It's either outdated or a little to vague for a beginner. Point me in the right direction and I'm sure I can figure it out.

I appreciate any help. Screenshots attached.

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SIPTEK
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I'm sorry but I don't know how to remove the lines from grub.install nor do I even know where grub.install is located.

Thanks

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SIPTEK
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I realize now that I didn't add the lines to the grub-install script but rather I instead just entered them at the bash prompt. It did fix the issue but now I don't know where or how to remove those lines as I can't seem to locate them.

Thanks

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patanassov
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Run 'which grub-install', it will return most probably /sbin/grub-install

Open it in an editor and look for the change. Commenting out with '#' at the beginning of line is enough

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DynamicJacob
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I know this is an old thread, but in my case it was INSTRUMENTAL in cracking a couple of tough codes.

I had to migrate VMs from PROXMOX onto ESXi 5.0. I did this using VMWare p2v.

What made things work for me:

-Do not use DNS hostnames in the converter, use IP addresses

-Have a helper IP address available for exclusive use by the converter

-The converter does not handle GRUB2, but it will still complete the conversion process otherwise, but it will fail to reconfigure the boot loader and thus not boot

For Debian 8, per another user's reply suggestion in this thread, I used the boot ISO version of https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home/Home/ . Unfortunately this wasn't enough to resolve all issues.

VMware P2V Conversion: GrubInstaller Error During Conversion of Debian Linux Host | Mantraaz led me to believe that the UUIDs of the drives in /etc/fstab were wrong, which was the case. I used blkid to get the new IDs, updated /etc/fstab with the new IDs, and restarted without issues. One thing of note, if it boots in read-only mode, reboot, edit the boot startup (hit e when it asks if you want to boot Debian) and replace the "ro" flag with "rw".

CentOS 6 (or 5? don't remember) was also a PITA. Unfortunately I got that one converted a month and a half ago and forgot some of the details, but the same general issue of needing to fix the boot loader applies. I believe the following article helped me solve the issues I faced.

TipsAndTricks/CreateNewInitrd - CentOS Wiki

Anyways, thanks everybody who commented in this thread years ago, you helped!

avalonzst
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Hi,

      Let's say your solution works, if I changed  the uuid  to logical disk path (like /dev/sda1 ) from source server  /etc/fstab, trying to convert again, it will also works fine, right ?

      Now I'am trying to make a test, will let you know the result.

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avalonzst
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Tried and failed.

Should I reboot source server and the try to convert it?

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