VMware server virtualization

At work we had an old server with Suse 8.1 installed. While planning to convert it to Debian and install some new SATA controllers and disks I had the idea of converting it to a virtual server to minimize the down time.
I started the machine with a rescue CD and did a dd image of the physical hard disk on an external USB 2.0 drive.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/external/server_hda.img

and then converted the image to a VMware image

qemu-img convert -f raw server_hda.img -O vmdk server_hda.vmdk

You can find the qemu-img utility in the Debian qemu package.

After that it was just a matter of copying the vmdk to the machine on which the VMware server was to be installed.

VMware server was downloaded from http://www.vmware.com/download/server/ (about 100 Mb).
I selected the tar.gz because the target OS was Debian.
To let it work correctly in Debian I also had to download the vmware-any-any update from http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/

I also downloaded the Management Interface from the VMware site to my workstation, and installed it. It provides a nice GUI for the virtual servers.
After extracting the downloaded files I launched the provided install scripts.

First the VMware server as root with ./vmware-install.pl, but didn't start the configuration. The any-any update has to be applied with ./runme.pl
For the configuration and rebuilding of the VMware modules some tools are needed, which can be installed with

apt-get install libx11-6 libx11-dev libxtst6 xinetd build-essential

this is probably somewhere redundant

apt-get install gcc binutils-doc make manpages-dev autoconf automake1.9 libtool flex bison gdb libc6-dev gcc-2.95-doc

and because it didn't work the first time I installed also

apt-get install libxt6 libxrender1

So the underlying software was ready. It was time to configure the virtual server. I started with the advanced version and defined the VM as a Suse Linux and that I already have a disk file and then started the new VM.
It booted immediately.

When I was in the console of the virtualized system I checked the /etc/fstab and removed all the unused entries. The second thing was to let the system load the appropriate module for the network interface. I therefore looked at /etc/modules.conf and changed the line with
alias eth0 somemodule to alias eth0 pcnet32
which is the module for the virtual Ethernet card.

After that I rebooted the system to be sure that all the services come up right and the "new" server was ready.

News

After a long time, finally an update ;)
About the car incident I have no news, except that I had to drive to car to some insurance experts, to make a report for the street victims found, that will refund the repair, but only the sum over 500€.
With the house there are some problems... They told me, that if we want to make the house higher we have to obtain a signed agreement of the neighbours. :(
We have luck... we have just 2 of them :)

In the last days I was busy at work with the updates to Debian 4.0 Etch. They were pretty straightforward, except for the upgrade of amavisd-new. There was a change in the configuration layout. From a monolithic file it was split in various files. The change was needed, the next upgrades will be easier, but I lost some hours figuring out where to insert my customizations.
Next week there will be a major update on the main server - change OS from SuSE to Debian. I'm a little bit worried, but somehow I have to manage it.

At home I finally ordered and got an analogical telephony card that works with Asterisk. Let's hope the configuration will not be too difficult.
In my free time I finally decided to give something back and started helping with the Slovene translation of *ubuntu in Launchpad.

Yesterday a friend from Perugia wrote, they had their second baby! Little Maria Cristina was 3.020Kg at birth. I wish her the best!