Can I move a Linux box to a VM?

[JD50]

I was wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to move a physical Linux installation to a VM using either VMware or Xen. I see that VMware has a tool that lets you move a physical windows installation to a VM, but it doesn't say anything about Linux. TIA.

 

[QuixoticOne]

In general you can do this successfully. If your system is configured to depend on certain hardware like a GPU by using the proprietary ATI/NVIDIA driver of course that will cause problems when you boot the VM.

Either install the VM guest additions for the guest OS to get better driver support for screen / networking / disk, or at least minimize the dependence of your system on specific GPU / disk / NIC hardware.

Once it boots successfully into text mode multi-user mode you can always do edits to the configuration files, install drivers, et. al.

It is possible in some VM software to share a physical drive or drive partition to the guest so in that case you'd really be booting the installed OS right from the partition/drive it is already on, but it would be booting in the VM.

Otherwise use a VM disk image generation utility to capture your LINUX partition into a VM disk image and then boot that.

You may need to edit your boot loader or kernel configuration arguments to adjust for specifying the right disk drive / partition that appears to have the root and boot for the OS.