How to migrate from a Ubuntu machine to VMWare Fusion?

[mpemburn]

Hi,

I've been trying to find a way to get one of my Ubuntu installations migrated to a VMWare Fusion. I have a vm that works well under Parallels but it will not migrate successfully into VMWare. My other possibility is a laptop that has a Ubuntu 9.10 installed with everything I'd want on my virtual machine. Is there a equivalent of "Migration Assistant" for Ubuntu?

Thanks,

Mark

[WoodyZ]

I recently used Clonezilla Live to clone a Dell Latitude D600 running Ubuntu 9.04 to a VMware Virtual Machine and the VM booted just fine. I've also used it V2V so what I'd do is remove Parallels Tools and try using Clonezilla Live to create and image and then drop the image on a new VMware Virtual Machine.

[mpemburn]

Thanks Woody!

I think I'll try the second option you mention. I guess I can create a bootable USB Clonezilla drive and use it to boot the Parallels VM and do the cloning from there -- assuming it gives me access to my Mac's drives. I'll check it out and report my results.

Mark

[WoodyZ · Accepted solution]

You could give the following a try...

Download the Clonezilla Live .iso image file and you can boot the Virtual Machines directly from an .iso image. If you are on a Physical LAN you can connect directly to it and create the Fusion Virtual Machine and boot both VM's at the same time and then image directly from one virtual hard disk on the source to the target on the other Virtual Machine. The one thing you do have to do it format the target virtual hard drive first, I use a GParted Live ISO Image for that, and then you can actually use the single .iso image to boot both VM's and do a disk to remote disk clone. As far as the virtual hard drive on the target I make it the same size as the source and format one primary partition of the type the source is, as an example ext4, and set the boot flag on it. Clonzilla will handle the rest as far as the source layout.

If you can't network the two together then you have to go from disk to image and the image to disk.

[mpemburn]

Well, it was worth a try.

It actually worked pretty well from the Clonezilla end. I chose to save the image to my Mac's disk, then created a fresh copy of a Ubuntu vm under VMWare. I booted the latter from Clonezilla, logged into the Mac (ssh is by far the easiest method) and restored from the image. Unfortunately, I get the same problem I've encountered with the other method (i.e., letting VMWare migrate the Parallels VM directly): It'll boot up to a text screen that says, "Ubuntu 9.10 ubuntu tty1" with a login prompt under it and the whole screen is flashing on and of rapidly. It won't readily accept typing so I can't log in and do anything with it. May just have to start from scratch.

Mark

[WoodyZ]

I have done this many times P2V and V2V and never had a problem. After I posted last in this thread I went and tested going directly from a Parallels Desktop 6 Linux Virtual Machine to a VMware Fusion Virtual Machine after first changing the Network 1 setting on the Parallels Desktop 6 Linux Virtual Machine to use vmnet8 so I could go disk to remote disk directly using VMware NAT Networking. It worked flawlessly. I also did not have Parallels Tools installed, did you uninstall them first?

I used a Fedora Linux Virtual Machine for the test last night so I'm going to go test with an Ubuntu Linux Virtual Machine and see what happens.

[mpemburn]

I'll have to look into this later (have to do some actual work now). Not actually sure if Parallels tools is installed or, if they how to get rid of them.

[WoodyZ]

It'll boot up to a text screen that says, "Ubuntu 9.10 ubuntu tty1" with a login prompt under it and the whole screen is flashing on and of rapidly. It won't readily accept typing so I can't log in and do anything with it.

You definitely still have Parallels Tools installed and you must uninstall first before cloning and I did mention that in my original reply in this thread.

To uninstall Parallels Tools...

While in the Guest: Parallels Desktop (menu bar) > Virtual Machine > Reinstall Parallels Tools

In a Terminal:

sudo /media/cdrom0/install --remove

When done it should display the following message:

Parallels Guest Tools were installed, upgraded or removed successfully!
Please, reboot your OS to finish installation, upgrade or removal of Guest Tools.

Then in Terminal type the following or reboot normally:

sudo shutdown -r now

After the Guest reboots then shutdown normally and configure it to boot from the Clonzilla Live ISO Image. Also if using Parallels Desktop 6 and not connected to a Physical LAN you can configure the Network to use the VMware Network vmnet8 to do a disk_to_remote_disk clone and go directly to the VMware Fusion Virtual Machine.

[mpemburn]

Woody,

Removing Parallels Tools definitely did the trick. Sorry, I can be a bit thick at times. Thanks for all your help!

Mark