[kwlug-disc] Unique VM Installation

[John Van Ostrand]

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.

-- 
John Van Ostrand 
CTO, co-CEO 
Net Direct Inc. 
564 Weber St. N. Unit 12, Waterloo, ON N2L 5C6 
Ph: 866-883-1172 x5102 
Fx: 519-883-8533 

Linux Solutions / IBM Hardware