Upgrading a VM created in Wkstn 4.x to Wkstn 6.0.4

Montef · ‎07-22-2008

My host OS is Linux. It's running the Gentoo distribution. I'm on kernel version 2.6.25.

I have a single Virtual Machine that has Windows XP Professional in it.

The Virtual Machine was originally created with VMware Workstation 4.x.

I need to upgrade this Virtual Machine to Workstation 6.0.4 in order to be able to get iTunes to see and sync with my new iPhone 3G.

It's my understanding from reading multiple other VMware Communities postings that the minimum VMware Workstation version required for iPhone to function properly is 6.0.3

I have Workstation 6.0.4 installed. I, unfortunately; do NOT have 4.0.3 installed any longer - because I was a bonehead and wasn't watching what I was typing at 3am. :smileyangry:

My XP guest DOES boot and runs under 6.0.4.

It's my understanding from the searching I've done in the Knowledgebase, that I should shutdown the guest OS (WinXP), open the config for the virtual machine, and select "Upgrade or Changer Version" from the 'VM' menu.

When I do that, I get this message from the Change Version Wizard:

"This virtual machine's hardware version can not be changed because it has a legacy snapshot."

I would like some guidance/assistance from a more experienced person as to what I should do next, please.

I'm including my .cfg and my .vmdk files as attachments as per the recommendations in the posting guidelines. An "ls -l" of the virtual machine's directory (again as requested in the posting guidelines) is here:

-

ls -l

total 24957032

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 11 2007 scripts

-rw-rr 1 monte 1010 6463732 Nov 14 2006 vmware-core.gz

-rw-rr 1 root root 35518 Jul 3 15:55 winXPPro-0.log

-rw-rr 1 root root 76222 Jul 2 10:26 winXPPro-1.log

-rw-rr 1 root root 33463 Jun 17 13:12 winXPPro-2.log

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 2145976320 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro-s001.vmdk

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 2047868928 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro-s002.vmdk

-rw------- 1 monte root 862846976 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro-s003.vmdk

-rw------- 1 monte root 663158784 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro-s004.vmdk

-rw------- 1 monte root 1498939392 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro-s005.vmdk

-rw------- 1 monte root 1392050176 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro-s006.vmdk

-rw------- 1 monte root 2118778880 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro-s007.vmdk

-rw------- 1 monte root 183369728 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro-s008.vmdk

-rwxr-xr-x 1 monte 1010 1994 Jul 16 23:36 winXPPro.cfg

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 1716 Jul 1 2006 winXPPro.cfg.sav

-rw-rr 1 root root 96857 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.log

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 8664 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.nvram

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 8664 Jul 1 2006 winXPPro.nvram.sav

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 848816 Jul 1 2006 winXPPro.png.sav

-rw------- 1 monte root 960 Jul 21 00:03 winXPPro.vmdk

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 1506607104 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.vmdk-s001.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 1376780288 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.vmdk-s002.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 2055143424 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.vmdk-s003.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 2100625408 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.vmdk-s004.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 2092892160 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.vmdk-s005.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 2057371648 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.vmdk-s006.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 2061500416 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.vmdk-s007.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 1073152000 Jul 17 16:04 winXPPro.vmdk-s008.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 617 Jul 16 23:29 winXPPro.vmdk.REDO_LdL4Ub

-rw------- 1 monte 1010 286265724 Jul 1 2006 winXPPro.vmsn

-rw------- 1 root root 252 Oct 11 2007 winXPPro.vmxf

-

If there is not enough information here to provide an accurate description of my situation; please let me know what else is needed.

Thanks in advance!!

mikefoley · ‎07-22-2008

Try using the Import function (built-in VMware Converter) to create a fresh copy of the VM? You can update it within Converter as well.

mike

Montef · ‎07-22-2008

Hi Mike. Thanks for the reply!

How do I access the Import function? It's not a menu choice, and doing a help -> search for 'import' returns a "No Results Found".

I looked at the description for Converter on the download page, but it looks like a tool designed to run on Windows. Since my host OS is Linux and my guest OS is Windows, I don't think the Converter utility will help me..?..? Or do I just not understand how to use the tool?..?

Peter_vm · ‎07-22-2008

I looked at the description for Converter on the download page, but it looks like a tool designed to run on Windows. Since my host OS is Linux and my guest OS is Windows, I don't think the Converter utility will help me..?..? Or do I just not understand how to use the tool?..?

You install and run converter in your Windows guest OS. Create a clone on a network share...then transfer it wherever it needs to be.

continuum · ‎07-22-2008

>You install and run converter in your Windows guest OS.

Impossible as OP hasn't installed 4.x - 6.x will not work with legacy snapshot.

Anyway - either install WS 4 as a WS 6 VM and give the VM with WS 4 installed access to the location of that old VM - or simply boot your host into Cool-linux LiveCD - which has WS 4 installed.

Plan B - read

http://sanbarrow.com/vmx/vmx-undoable-mode-for-vmserver.html

http://sanbarrow.com/vmx/vmx-virthw-modes.html

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

Montef · ‎07-22-2008

Thanks for the clarification, Peter. Somehow, that's just not clear to me from reading what's on the VMware site.

Sounds like a simple solution to my situation... Then I read continuum's post below yours that seems to indicate it's not possible.

Montef · ‎07-22-2008

I don't have install media for WS 4.x any longer. When I bought it, I did not buy a physical CD; I downloaded it. I can no longer find the tar file that I could install it from.

I did read the documents on sanbarow.com that you posted. I will go read them again a second time, as it is not immediately clear to me how they apply to my situation

continuum · ‎07-22-2008

The links do not fully apply to your scenario - they just describe how to handle very old VMs with newer versions.

It may work to merge the WS4 snapshot with WS 6 if you downgrade the VM as described in my links.

If everything else fails - download Cool Linux LiveCD - it has WS 4

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

Montef · ‎07-23-2008

Peter's idea sounded really simple and worth a try.

Even moreso after talking to a collegue who's had more formal VMware training than I've had. So I decided to give it a shot last night.

The short answer is that it WORKED!! :D:D Read on below for more details.

Here's the sequence of events:

Start VMware Workstation 6.0.4 on the Linux (Gentoo distro 2.6.25-r4 kernel) host.

Start the Virtual Machine that contains Win XP Pro. This VM was originally created with Workstation 4.0.?

Download and install VMware Converter 3.0.3-89816 from the VMware web site, taking all the default options given by the installer.

Run Converter.

Sadly, here is where I failed to keep detailed notes. I was going through the sequence of events in Converter while talking this through on the phone with someone (thanks again, Bruce) who'd used Converter before. It wasn't possible to type/click and talk/write all at the same time. I thought I could remember it well enough to document it all here, but I've slept since then and am apparently having a Senior Moment.

The basics are that I told Converter to convert 'this computer' (which was really the VM). It picked drive c: for me. I said "don't convert network drives". I picked "allow disk to grow" when describing the disk type for the new target machine.

I selected a destination on a network drive (SMB share on a Yellow Machine NAS box), picked a name for the new Virtual Machine, and started the conversion process.

I tried to make as few changes to the configs between the old 4.0.x Virtual Machine and the new 6.0.4 Virtual Machine as possible.

It took about 4.5 hours for the process to run. When the conversion process finished, I saved the logs from Converter, shut down the guest OS (winXP), and had a look at what was in the destination directory. It all looked reasonable, so I started up this new 'converted' Virtual Machine. To my great surprise and amazement, it actually booted! And it was FAST! I mean.. really, really FAST. As in 2 or 3 times faster than it was pre-conversion!!

Not unexpectedly, Windows found lots of new hardware; and spent several minutes showing me it's new environment and wanting to reboot several times.

After the 3rd reboot or so, Windows told me that it'd found a new camera device and asked me what I wanted to do. It was the camera in the iPhone! I took this to be a good sign, so I started up iTunes.

After thinking about it for a few minutes, iTunes announced that it had detected an iPhone; but that the phone could not be identified. The suggestion was to unplug the iPhone from the USB port and plug it back in. I did this several times. Each time, I got the little pop-up box from Windows down in the system tray about having detected a USB 2.0 device that could really perform better if it were plugged into a high-speed port.

I know that the USB ports on my Asus motherboard are all USB 2.0 ports. So I started a tail -f /var/log/messages running on the Linux host and watched the messages while I unplugged and re-plugged the iPhone's USB cable.

A part of one of the messages looked interesting to me, so I googled:

"not running at top speed; connect to a high speed hub"

and found several references to people who were getting this message when trying to attach USb disk drives. More than one person suggested that they'd had success if they just unloaded the Linux USB kernel modules ( ohci_hcd first and ehci_hcd second ) and then reloaded them.

So I did.

rmmod ohci_hcd

rmmod ehci_hcd

modprobe ohci_hdc

modprobe ehci_hcd

I went back toVMware/WinXP and started up iTunes. iTunes immediately saw the iPhone! I was able to configure it, and sync all my contacts and applications into the iPhone. I haven't been able to sync my music yet, because iTunes claims it can't find the files; but I suspect that's an artifact of this whole moving process and will be something easy to correct. It may, in fact; be related to one of the only two "problems" yet unsolved with the new Virtual Machine. More on that in a bit.

So. The iPhone is now (mostly) sync'd. It IS possible to run iTunes 7.7 on Windows XP, running in a VMware Virtual machine on a Linux host. I've seen it with my own two eyes.

Now.. About those remaining two problems...

First and most critical is that Workstation is filling up / on my Linux host now. It seems to be somehow related to allocating disk space in /tmp. After running for a few minutes, VMware will give me a message about /tmp/vmware-root-38761436 not having any free space. When I look at df -h / I see that it's at 100%. But there's nothing written to disk in that /tmp/vware-root -38761436 directory. If I shutdown XP, and exit out of Workstation, / immediately goes from 100% full to 60% full.

Is there a way I can somehow tell VMware to use some other location for tmp space other than /tmp?

The second problem is that the new Virtual Machine can't talk to the network. It has an interface, and an IP address assigned to that interface; but it doesn't see any traffic. I can't ping the VM's address, nor can I ping anything on the network from the VM. I suspect this is the cause of the above-mentioned iTunes inablility to see any of my music files; as my MP3 collection lives in a directory on the Linux host, and is not stored inside the Windows filesystem on the Virtual Machine.

Peter, continuum, Bruce; I can't thank you enough for the help and suggestions with this problem!! I've tried several times to mark Peter's suggestion about running Converter as having solved the problem; but every time I do I get a message from the fourm about "a serious error has occurred".

Anyone who has any insight into the last two issues (filling up / and no network), please let me know.

I'm attaching the .vmx file for the new 'converted' machine here in the event it might be helpful to someone else who's having the same problems I had.

continuum · ‎07-23-2008

Did you discard the snapshots ?

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

Montef · ‎07-23-2008

I never found anything that looked like a snapshot on disk.

I saw nothing during the process of doing the conversion that looked like a reference in any way to a snapshot.

So I'd say the answer to your question is "No. Not intentionally."

continuum · ‎07-23-2008