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Re: Migrate Virtualbox

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On Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 09:20:18PM +0900, Mark Fletcher wrote:
>Hello!
>
>I have been reading from a couple of people on this list that Virtualbox
>is going away and will not be in stretch when it becomes the stable
>distro shortly.
>
>I use Virtualbox for a couple of Windows machines to do the last task I
>cannot yet migrate to Debian (due to specialist software that is not made
>for Linux).
>
>I am starting to contemplate migrating from Virtualbox to a different
>virtualisation solution that will be supported in Stretch.
>
>My needs are fairly vanilla -- I have a 4-core-with-hyperthreading Intel
>Core i7 920 CPU, circa 2009, and 24GB or RAM in the host. I run 2 VMs,
>not all the time, which have 2 CPUs and 4GB of RAM each.
>
>Access to physical optical drive, and virtual disks, is important.
>Shared folders with the host OS (which is currently Jessie and will be
>Stretch in the future) is important. 2D graphics is important, 3D less
>so. Ability to access physical USB equipment attached to the host would
>be nice but not a show-stopper. I have never got that working completely
>satisfactorily with my Virtualbox install, but suspect that is due more
>to insufficient time reading documentation than it is to limitations in
>the software (which should illustrate the importance of that element of
>things).
>
>Minimal time futzing around to get the virtualisation solution working
>is important, as is not having to learn an entirely new paradigm to use
>the software. Stability of the result is also important.
>
>And finally, a neat solution to migrate my Virtualbox machines to the
>new environment is very important -- I would infinitely prefer not to
>have to re-install from scratch into the new environment but would
>prefer to be able to migrate my Virtualbox disks to the new environment
>somehow, if anything supports that.
>
>So my question is, is there an alternative solution in Debian that
>allows for that easy migration path -- any recommendations?

I have recently gone down this path myself. I chose qemu+kvm as my 
virtualisation platform of choice, as it seems the most 'natively Linux' 
option (that is, QEMU is FOSS and KVM is in the kernel, so no 
third-party bits needed).

I suggest installing the 'virt-manager', 'libvirt-daemon-system' and 
'qemu-kvm' packages (frontend, middleware and virtualisation, 
respectively). You should then be able to use the 'virt-manager' 
graphical interface to create, manage and interact with your Virtual 
Machines.

In terms of migrating from VirtualBox, the procedure seems to work as 
follows:
 * Uninstall the VirtualBox tools from the guest
 * Use VirtualBox to convert the VDI into a RAW disk (this will expand 
 it to the full size, so make sure you have enough space):
   VBoxManage clonehd /path/to/guest.vdi /path/to/guest.img --format raw
 * Use qemu-img to convert this into a compressed, expandable "QCOW2" 
 disk:
   qemu-img convert -f raw /path/to/guest.img -O qcow2 
   /var/lib/libvirt/images/guest.qcow2 -c -p
 * Now create a new virtual machine from scratch, using the guest.qcow2 
 image (There doesn't appear to be a way to automate converting the 
 VirtualBox definition to a libvirt one, so you'll need to redefine the 
 machine.

One more thing to note. The "Virtio" disk driver is more efficient than 
emulating AHCI, etc so it's best to use that. If your guest is Linux, 
then it should just pick up on the new drive as "/dev/vda". If you're 
using Windows, though, this seems to work:

 * Set the main drive as "AHCI", and create a second drive (any size) as 
 "VIRTIO".
 * Boot into the guest and install the virtio drivers from Fedora: 
 fedoraproject.org/wiki/Windows_Virtio_Drivers#ISO_contents
 * Windows should now know how to use Virtio (i.e. be able to see the 
 second disk)
 * Shut down the guest, change the main drive to use virtio, and restart 
 the guest.
 * Windows should now be able to boot from the main drive. You can 
 delete the second drive.

>
>Thanks
>
>Mark
>

-- 
For more information, please reread.

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Thread

Migrate Virtualbox Mark Fletcher <mark27q1@gmail.com> - 2017-02-17 13:30 +0100
  Re: Migrate Virtualbox Hans <hans.ullrich@loop.de> - 2017-02-17 13:40 +0100
  Re: Migrate Virtualbox Georgi Naplatanov <gosho@oles.biz> - 2017-02-17 13:50 +0100
    Re: Migrate Virtualbox Peter Hillier-Brook <phb@hbsys.plus.com> - 2017-02-17 15:20 +0100
    Re: Migrate Virtualbox Mark Fletcher <mark27q1@gmail.com> - 2017-02-17 15:30 +0100
      Re: Migrate Virtualbox Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> - 2017-02-17 18:30 +0100
  Re: Migrate Virtualbox Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> - 2017-02-17 14:10 +0100
    Re: Migrate Virtualbox Mark Fletcher <mark27q1@gmail.com> - 2017-02-17 15:30 +0100
  Re: Migrate Virtualbox Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi> - 2017-02-17 14:40 +0100
    Re: Migrate Virtualbox Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi> - 2017-02-17 16:00 +0100
  Re: Migrate Virtualbox Kent West <westk@acu.edu> - 2017-02-17 20:10 +0100
    Re: Migrate Virtualbox Sven Hartge <sven@svenhartge.de> - 2017-02-17 20:20 +0100

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