[kwlug-disc] Unique VM Installation

[William Park]

On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 10:07:36AM -0400, John Van Ostrand wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Can anyone think of how I might go about installing from the system
> partition of my Lenovo workstation into a VM? 
> 
> The system partition (sda1) is a Windows PE environment with recovery
> and restore tools that will image the other partition on the disk with
> the copy of Windows that was licensed with the system. Windows users
> are normally not shown that partition, it's hidden. Normally the
> Lenovo rescue will install into another partition on the disk, but
> with VM it seems we don't use partitions any more. I bet it avoids
> installing on another disk to avoid the issue of pirating (yeah DRM
> :-().
> 
> I figure I could:
> 
> 1. try to find a way to have KVM see a disk as a partitioned device
> and DD the system partition into the virtual partition,
> 2. Trick the Lenovo restore utility into installing onto another disk,
> 3. Find the image and somehow do an install with another tool,
> 4. Wipe my Linux box, do the install, take an image, re-install Linux
> and re-image back.
> 
> I'm hoping to avoid the obvious #4 option.

Not sure what you mean by "installing from the system partition into a
VM".  But, if it's copying a partition to another partition (be it real
or inside VM), then you might try copying over net, assuming of course
the host and VM can talk over the net.  I've never done that.
-- 
William