View source for Creating a Virtual Machine from an Existing one Manually

__NOTOC__

Back to [[Xen on Debian]]

Assuming an LVM setup, this is the command for allocating the required disk space (in this example 20Gb) for the main disk of the virtual machine. Another amount is required for the swap space.
{{Command|<nowiki>lvcreate -L20G -n machine-name volumegroup-name
lvcreate -L2G -n machine-name-swap volumegroup-name</nowiki>}}
where machine-name and volumegroup-name are specific to the specific setup.

The virtual units are formatted
{{Command|<nowiki>mkfs.ext4 /dev/volumegroup-name/machine-name
mkswap /dev/volumegroup-name/machine-name-swap</nowiki>}}
At this point the base filesystem should be copied.  
First mount the partition:
{{Command|<nowiki>mount /dev/volumegroup-name/machine-name /mnt/some-directory</nowiki>}}
You must copy the existing machine filesystem except for the directories /proc and /dev.  Sometimes you must skip /home or other diretories. First create a file with the list of the directories to skip:
{{File|./ex|<pre><nowiki>
/proc
/sys
</nowiki></pre>}}
Then use rsync to copy the whole filesystem. Note the --exclude-from clausule, and its parameter which is the last file.
{{command|<nowiki>rsync -av --exclude-from ex 192.168.66.120:/ /mnt/some-directory/</nowiki>}}
After the file copy, it is necessary to edit some configuration files (All of them in the etc directory on the mounted partition, for example /mnt/some-directory): securetty, inittab and fstab.  First edit securetty
{{Command|<nowiki>vi /mnt/some-directory/securetty</nowiki>}}
A line containing hvc0 should be in the file.
{{File|/mnt/some-directory/etc/securetty|<pre><nowiki>
#...

# IBM iSeries/pSeries virtual console
hvc0
hvc1
#...
</nowiki></pre>}}
Then search inittab for a line with tty like the one below:
{{File|/mnt/some-directory/etc/inittab|<pre><nowiki>
#c1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 tty1 linux
</nowiki></pre>}}
and edit it to:
{{File|/mnt/some-directory/etc/inittab|<pre><nowiki>
c1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 hvc0 linux
</nowiki></pre>}}
Next, edit fstab to reflect the virtual drive configuration
{{File|/mnt/some-directory/etc/fstab|<pre><nowiki>
/dev/xvda1               /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
/dev/xvda4               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
</nowiki></pre>}}
It is important that in the moment the files were copied, the directories /proc and /sys had been left out.  Now it is important to create those directories. With the partition mounted create the directories:
{{Command|<nowiki>cd /mnt/some-directory
mkdir proc sys</nowiki>}}
And then create the devices for the virtual machines
{{Command|<nowiki>cd /mnt/some-directory/dev
mknod xvc0 c 204 191
mknod hvc0 c 229 0
mknod xvda b 202 0
mknod xvda1 b 202 1</nowiki>}}