Converting a VMware Disk Image for Qemu or Xen

Introduction

I've switched to the new Ubuntu, great! Except for one thing: VMware doesn't work yet, you have to wait for a patch, etc... but I don't have time to wait!

VMware is nice and pretty, but it's becoming annoying. So I decided to use KVM and QTqemu for the graphical interface. And here I am, ready to convert my VMware images.

Conversion

For conversion, we'll first use VMware for preparation and then qemu for the actual conversion:

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vmware-vdiskmanager -r vmware_image.vmdk -t 0 temporary_image.vmdk
qemu-img convert -f vmdk temporary_image.vmdk -O raw xen_compatible.img

FAQ

Great, but my Debian disk won't boot

This happens because if you configured your VMware disk as SCSI, you'll be using sdx device names. Your Debian busybox will launch, and you'll need to mount the partition containing /boot and edit the menu.lst file to change the kernel root. Here's some help:

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mkdir /test
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /test
vi /test/boot/grub/menu.lst

Change this:

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kernel      /vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 ro

to:

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kernel      /vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-amd64 root=/dev/hda1 ro

And finally, reboot :-)