Re: Trying to P2V an old linux box

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 8:13 AM, Jay Strauss <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 11:45 PM, Carl Karsten <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 10:49 PM, Jay Strauss <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > Hi, I'm attempting to P2V (Physical to Virtual) an old Debian box (that
>> > I
>> > don't update or take good care of).
>>
>> If you don't take care of it, why are you messing with it?
>
> I wanted to shutdown the box and move it to another server.  I'm trying to
> get some space in my basement.
>
>>
>> Guessing it does something you want, so I would build a new system
>> that does that.
>
> True, it does have some stuff that I need.  Rebuilding would be difficult as
> I don't remember how I built most of the stuff to begin with (it was years
> ago).  I'm not entirely sure I could recreate if I started from scratch.
>  While I don't take care of it, it doesn't mean some of the things running
> are not important.  The oldbox has just been running and running. <granted
> I'm not the best sys admin>

I strongly recommend rebuilding.  There is a good chance the thing
will get hacked or something stop working and trying to fix it will be
impractical due to no one being familiar with something old.

I too have had such boxes.  My first one was setup by a friend before
I knew much about Linux.  apache + samba + config/acl tweaks = easy
way for me to plop files onto a web server from my windows box.   It
was easy to get the 2 packages working, but took many emails to get
the 2 working together.



>
>>
>> >
>>
>> on P, do lspci
>
> oldbox:~# lspci
> 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX Host bridge (rev 03)
> 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX - 82443BX/ZX AGP bridge (rev 03)
> 00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
> 00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
> 00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
> 00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
> 00:0c.0 Multimedia audio controller: Yamaha Corporation YMF-724F [DS-1 Audio
> Controller] (rev 03)
> 00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139 (rev
> 10)
> 00:0f.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AIC-7861 (rev 03)

scsi - cool.

Any chance the kernel was built from source?  In the old days when
disks were slow and ram was expensive it made sense to only build the
drivers and modules you needed.  my guess is only the scsi drivers are
included in the kernel.  How does one tell?  um... There should be a
config file around.  If this is the case, totally time to give up on
this path.


>> My guess is the kernel only has support for the P disk controller, and
>> not the controller of the V.  if so, an easy solution is to add the
>> proper module to /etc/modules.  I have no clue what controller vmware
>> emulates.
>> --
>> Carl K
>
>
> I don't know how to determine if it's a problem with not having the proper
> support for the VMWare controller or it just can't find the / partition
> because its not pointing correctly.
> Thanks
> Jay
>
>



-- 
Carl K
-- 
Linux Users Of Northern Illinois (Chicago) - Technical Discussion 
http://luni.org/mailman/listinfo/luni