Skip to main content

Converting A VMware Image To A Physical Machine

1 Requirements

To perform this procedure you will need:
  • VMware Workstation, VMware Server or VMware Player.
  • CloneZilla ISO image.
  • Unpartitioned HDD with enough space to hold your VM image.

2 Preliminary Notes

This tutorial assumes basic knowledge of the cloning process and requires no previous experience on the use of Clonezilla. Make sure your OS is not using in any way the target HDD that will hold your final copy of the VM, otherwise VMware will complain about your disk been in use and CloneZilla will not perform a successful copy of the VM.

3 VMware Configuration

First thing is to make sure your virtual CD/DVD is using your CloneZilla ISO image to boot. Next add your physical HDD as part of your existing VM by clicking the Add button.



Select Hard Drive and click Next.

Select Use physical disk (for advanced users) then click Next.

Make sure you select the correct drive that you want to use for your physical disk and select the option Use entire disk.

Finally give a name to your configuration file then click Finish.

Make sure your final VMware hardware list include this two elements otherwise, start all over.



4 CloneZilla Cloning Process

Start your VMware and boot from your virtual ISO into CloneZilla image. Use the Live option with default settings.

Select your preferred language and continue.

Accept the default option Don't touch keymap and continue.

Select Stat_clonezilla and continue.

Select device-device option and continue.

Select Beginner mode and continue.

Select disk to local disk and continue.

Select your source disk and click OK.

Select your target disk and click OK, then press Enter to continue.

You will be presented with a warning, about your existing data on your target disk will be lost, make sure there's nothing usable on your disk before you continue.

You will be presented with a series of questions answer yes to all this prompts.

The cloning process may take a long time.

After the cloning process is finished hit Enter and power off the VM by pressing 0 on the CloneZilla menu.

The cloning process is complete, is now time to install your new HDD to your physical machine.

5 Troubleshooting Physical Machine

More likely your first encounter with your cloned OS will be a filesystem corruption, with the following error: Unexpected Inconsistency. To fix this problem enter your root password and run fsck -y to start the filesystem repair process. The -y answers yes to the questions the fsck command will probably output.

Your next challenge will be fixing your NIC, I have used two different methods to fix this problem.
Go into /etc/udev/rules.d and delete the file 70-persistent-net.rules then reboot. Deleting the file forces the detection process to run again at boot with no baggage left over from the cloning process.
The other way to fix this problem is by edit: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and add the MAC address of your new NIC.
Open eth0 using vi, type:
vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
Edit the following line:
HWADDR=
This is my sample config file:
# Micro-Star INT'L CO Gigabit Ethernet Controller
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
DHCPCLASS=
HWADDR=00:19:B1:2A:BA:B8
IPADDR=10.10.11.50
NETMASK=255.255.255.192
ONBOOT=yes
Save and close the file then reboot the server:
reboot
The system is now ready to be used.

6 Links

CloneZilla: http://clonezilla.org/


Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Recover Passwords Using Ophcrack LiveCD

Ophcrack LiveCD 3.4.0 is a completely self contained, bootable version of Ophcrack 3.4.0 - the easiest and most effective tool that I've ever found to "crack" your forgotten Windows password. For a quick overview of Ophcrack, see my complete review of Ophcrack 3.4.0 . Ophcrack is a free software program that recovers passwords so the first step you'll need to take is to visit Ophcrack's website . When the Ophcrack website loads as shown above, click the Download ophcrack LiveCD button. Note: Since you obviously can't get into your computer right now because you don't know the password, these first four steps will need to be completed on another computer that you have access to. This other computer will need to have access to the Internet and the capability to burn a disc (like a CD, DVD, etc.). Another Note: The instructions I've put together here walk you through the entire process of using Ophcrack LiveCD to recover your password. If you...
Post a Comment
Read more

Configuring the Linksys WRT54GS Router for wifi

Basic ADSL Router setup The full GUI can be accessed at http://ui.linksys.com/WRT54G/v1-v4/4.20.7/index.htm location  The router will work out of the box, but has none of the security functions enabled as standard. It should be connected by Cat5 or 5e ethernet cable between a modem and the computer network as its job is to manage traffic and protect the network with its built-in firewall. Configuring the WRT54GS is quite straightforward thanks to its user-friendly web interface. To access it enter; http://192.168.1.1 into your web browser. You will be prompted to enter a username and password. Enter admin for both, you will be changing this later. Router Name This image above is of the first web interface showing the basic configuration settings. Nothing needs to be changed here for most home user setups, but I suggest changing the Router Name to something meaningful and changing the Time Zone. If you have made any changes, click Save at t...
1 comment
Read more

How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7

If you have an ISO image of Windows 7, using Microsoft’s free utility is a quick and easy option to get the image on your USB flash drive. It requires XP SP2 or higher and if you’re using an XP machine you’ll need .NET Framework 2.0, and Microsoft Image Mastering API V2…both of which can be downloaded from the link below. It seemed to work best if I formatted the flash drive as NTFS before using the download tool. But that could be because of the flash drive I used…your mileage may vary.   It’s a pretty straight forward process, first browse to the location of your Windows 7 ISO file and click Next. Select USB device…this also helps you burn the ISO to DVD as well if you need that option. Choose your flash drive and click Begin copying. Now just wait for the process to complete. The drive will be formatted and files copied to the flash drive. When the process is finished you will be able to see the files on the flash drive as you would if you opened the installat...
1 comment
Read more