[clue] [tech] Ubuntu: how to make a bootable boot CD for my system?

[Will]

Instead of moving the existing disk images just make new images using DD.
 Most hyper visors can use DD created disk images and if they can not just
create a empty disk image boot the VM from CD and then use DD to copy the
disk image over to the empty drive.


   1. Boot old VM from media, get it on the LAN.
   2. Boot new VM from media get it on the LAN
   3. on new VM 'ssh root at oldvm "dd if=/dev/sda"|dd of=/dev/sda'
   4. Boot new VM from sda


On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Jim Ockers <ockers at ockers.net> wrote:

> **
> Hi CLUEbies,
>
> I'm moving a Ubuntu 8.10 system from one VM hypervisor to another.  Since
> the VM disk formats are incompatible I have to recreate the filesystem on
> the new VM and I thought I would just copy the filesystem over the
> network.  The only thing that won't be copied over is the ability of the
> new VM to boot from the hard disk.
>
> Red Hat/CentOS makes this easy because there's the mkbootdisk utility with
> --iso command line.  Using that, I can make a bootable CD that will boot my
> system without anything set up on the hard disk.  Once booted from the ISO,
> I can re-run grub and am good to go.  The only issue is getting the new VM
> booted in the first place.
>
> The Ubuntu 'mkboot' utility is stupid and busted.  One of its bugs is from
> the man page for mkboot(8) is "mkboot only works on floppy diskette
> drives."  Since this is a VM there is no floppy disk drive, real or
> virtual, on the server or hypervisor.  Frankly I'm really un-impressed with
> Ubuntu, but then again I'm from the Red Hat/CentOS school of general
> awesomeness, so maybe I'm missing something. :)  Feel free to flame away
> but the only thing that will really impress me is if there is some
> Ubuntu-ish easy way of doing the same thing (such as moving/cloning
> systems) that Red Hat has let me do for years.
>
> Is there some other EASY way to make this Ubuntu system boot exactly its
> kernel, with its own initrd, from a CD-ROM (ISO image, really)?  This is a
> headless server with no GUI.  I also don't want to a make bootable USB
> flash drive which is what most of my googling indicates that most Ubuntu
> users are trying to do.  I'm also not going to reinstall Ubuntu and
> reconfigure all of the services and custom stuff that's installed in this
> VM.
>
> You might think I should have to go try to dig up a USB floppy disk drive
> and assign it to the VM to try to get this to work.  For one thing, that
> level of old-schoolness is not really my style, but for another thing this
> VM hypervisor has "issues" with assigning USB devices to VMs, and so it
> wouldn't work anyway.  (Which is a big part of why I'm moving the whole
> thing to a different VM hypervisor.)
>
> Thanks,
> Jim
>
> --
> Jim Ockers, P.E., P.Eng. (ockers at ockers.net)
> Contact info: http://www.ockers.net/msi.html
>
>
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