guest .img files

guest .img files

[Lynn Wilborn]

I have a windows 2003 server guest that's been registered
with MS, and it probably won't let me do that many more
times. So I want to save the guest, erase fedora, and
install centos 5.4 when it comes out. 

Im told I can just copy the .img file of the guest to a
network share to back it up, but is there anything I would
need to do to have the virt-manager gui on the new OS see it
and list it when I copy it back? Does it need to be imported
in some way?

Someone mentioned some sort of xml file is needed for the
image for virt-manager. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Re: guest .img files

[Kenni Lund]

2009/10/17 Lynn Wilborn <lynn@hotrodpc.com>:
> I have a windows 2003 server guest that's been registered
> with MS, and it probably won't let me do that many more
> times. So I want to save the guest, erase fedora, and
> install centos 5.4 when it comes out.

I don't know if this always is the case, but I've done several
reinstallations of Windows 2003
and if it won't accept your legal serial, you'll get the option to
phone your local MS department
and they'll reactivate it so you'll be able to install it on "new hardware".

> Im told I can just copy the .img file of the guest to a
> network share to back it up, but is there anything I would
> need to do to have the virt-manager gui on the new OS see it
> and list it when I copy it back? Does it need to be imported
> in some way?

I don't know if there's a fancier way, but I did it some time ago
myself; just backup the image
and the corresponding libvirt XML configuration file from
/etc/libvirt/qemu/ (or something like
that, I don't have access to a Fedora machine at the moment) and copy
it back on the new
machine. Now restart the libvirtd daemon, to make it load the
XML-files and start up virt-manager.

FYI: This is a bit off topic as it is not really related to KVM, a
better place to ask virt-manager
questions would be at the fedora-virt mailing list;
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt

Best Regards
Kenni Lund

Re: guest .img files

[Cole Robinson]

On 10/17/2009 06:52 PM, Kenni Lund wrote:
> 2009/10/17 Lynn Wilborn <lynn@hotrodpc.com>:
>> I have a windows 2003 server guest that's been registered
>> with MS, and it probably won't let me do that many more
>> times. So I want to save the guest, erase fedora, and
>> install centos 5.4 when it comes out.
> 
> I don't know if this always is the case, but I've done several
> reinstallations of Windows 2003
> and if it won't accept your legal serial, you'll get the option to
> phone your local MS department
> and they'll reactivate it so you'll be able to install it on "new hardware".
> 
>> Im told I can just copy the .img file of the guest to a
>> network share to back it up, but is there anything I would
>> need to do to have the virt-manager gui on the new OS see it
>> and list it when I copy it back? Does it need to be imported
>> in some way?
> 

You should just be able to do:

Original host: virsh dumpxml <vmname> > vmname.xml
New host     : virsh define vmname.xml

Assuming any files referenced in the XML are in the same location on the
new host.

For a more generic way to import an existing image, you can use

virt-install --import ...

Which allows building a new XML config with all of virt-install's flags.

> I don't know if there's a fancier way, but I did it some time ago
> myself; just backup the image
> and the corresponding libvirt XML configuration file from
> /etc/libvirt/qemu/ (or something like
> that, I don't have access to a Fedora machine at the moment) and copy
> it back on the new
> machine. Now restart the libvirtd daemon, to make it load the
> XML-files and start up virt-manager.
> 
> FYI: This is a bit off topic as it is not really related to KVM, a
> better place to ask virt-manager
> questions would be at the fedora-virt mailing list;
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt
> 

Just to clarify, for virt-manager/virt-install issues in general (not
specifically fedora related), virt-tools-list is also available:

https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/virt-tools-list

Thanks,
Cole