How do you take a disk image and turn it into a virtual machine in VirtualBox? For example, assume I have a physical machine and I run a dd command on the hard drive. Is there a way to turn that into a virtual machine?
2
-
There are lots of tools to convert a physical machine into a virtual machine. Have you tried one of those? There are other disk imaging tools that have tools to convert those image into a virtual machine hdd have you tried any of those?– RamhoundCommented Dec 12, 2014 at 14:33
-
I have not. do you have any names?– MatthewCommented Dec 12, 2014 at 14:58
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
I answered a similar question, but it's certainly not a duplicate. Here is the redacted version of my other answer.
First make sure your disk image is in raw format. If you create it from dd, this is probably already the case.
For VirtualBox you can use the vboxmanage command with the convertfromraw option. This converts your disk image to a format that is readable for Virtualbox.
Next you can create a Virtual machine using the converted image as primary disk (to boot from it) or use a live CD and mount the disk in the VM for further inspection.
Maybe this article is also of interest to you: VirtualBox - convert RAW image to VDI and otherwise
I'm assuming you're comfortable with linux, since you're using dd. So I would be tempted to take the dd created image, and booting a VM from a live Linux iso, dd the image back onto a new virtual hard drive in the VM. Then reboot the VM (without the live iso) and hopefully it will boot from your newly "copied" virtual hard drive.
