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VMware converter - Linux physical machine to VM

Hi all,

I am using VMware converter 5 to try to convet a physical Linux (Debian) web server to our VMWare infrastructure.

It crashes at 99% (it did not seem to copy any files as the process took 4 minutes only !!)

The error message is the following (translated from French) :

FAILED: An error occured while converting : 'GrubInstaller::InstallGrub: /usr/lib/vmware-converter/installGrub.sh failed with return code: 127, and message: Installing GRUB1 on (hd0)... /vmware-updateGrub.sh: 59: grub:
not found Error installing GRUB Error running vmware-updateGrub.sh through chroot into /mnt/p2v-src-root '

I see the VM on my Vcenter but as soon as the converter stops, the VM is being deleted so I have no idea of what has been converted.

Hope someone can help

Thanks

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

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dlan75

ASKER

Well it is not listed, that is a fact but there might be a solution no?

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

Converter 5.0 is troublesome at the best of times. If it's not been tested and confirmed working on a flavour of Linux it is even more difficult to troubleshoot, at 99% it's trying to install Customization/Reconfig/VMware Tools usually.

Did you specify, customization options or install VMware Tools?

dlan75

ASKER

Not particularly I left the maximum as standard in order to avoid those problems. The weird thing is that it comes to 99% in 4 minutes that is very fast, I don't see how it can transfer anything within that time

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

its possible it does not recognise the partition.

dlan75

ASKER

so what can I do for it to recognise the partition?

Gerwin Jansen

Is this a one time only conversion? If that is the case, you could try and create a clonezilla image of your debian server and import that into an empty (debian) VM.

dlan75

ASKER

yes it is, would you have some documentation or tutorial to do that?

Gerwin Jansen

I did not write a tuturial myself but found you one here:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-clonezilla/

Note that I only restored to a VMware player image, not the VMware server.

dlan75

ASKER

ok will try that this week

Gerwin Jansen

So the clonezilla method did not work for you?

dlan75

ASKER

nope :-(