Windows NT from vmware to kvm

Posted by Luca Rossi on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Luca Rossi
Published on 2011-11-15T00:56:01Z Indexed on 2011/11/15 1:57 UTC
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I'm trying to convert a couple of old Windows NT virtual servers from vmware to KVM. I tried almost all guidelines and how to I found around the web but with no luck.

I have the vmware virtual disk:

Dlc1.vmdk

partitioned image. I converted the vmdk into qcow2 image with the qemu utility and I tried to use it with kvm:

kvm -hda test.qemu -vnc :1 -m 750

but I receive "error loading operating system"

I also tried with raw partitions I can mount through losetup and kpartx. but nothing changed

I also tried to create an brand new image file with:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 test.qcow2 2G

I partitioned the new image file and I copied the original partition 1 to the new partition 1 with dd:

dd if=/dev/mapper/loop1p1 of=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 bs=128M

no luck again

I also tried with a single unpartitioned file:

qemu-img create -f qcow2 test.qcow2 2G

and I copied the partition 1 to the new image file:

dd if=/dev/mapper/loop0p1 of=test.img bs=128M

but when booting, I receive a black screen and the virtual machine hangs.

The bootloader is loaded successfully, because I also tried with a GRUB live iso and I receive the same screens and errors. Note that grub sees the Windows setup and give me the boot choice.

I have the suspect the problem is that the vmware machine is probably a scsi guest and in centos 6 (my system) scsi emulation is no longer supported. But in that case, where to change in Windows? I'm not so skilled with MS systems.

Thank you for the help

Luca Rossi

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