[GTALUG] Seeking recommendation: KVM vs Virtualbox

[Michael Galea]

I took Alvin's advice and tried the p to v toolsets for both virtualbox
and KVM.
The resultant VirtualBox image booted but I could never get it to load
the system.
KVM, on the other hand, cleanly ran the XP image.  In the end I had
games on the XP VM that:
1) were installed from CD,
2) were installed from CD (but used Direct X),
3) were installed from game managers like steam and big fish.

Type 3) games wouldn't play (the game manager required a new hardware
key). Type 2 games wouldn't play as QXL, redhat's VGA driver 
implementation doesn't support Direct X. And type 1) games are easy 
enough to reinstall from scratch.

As a result of the research, I learned how to make a clean XP install
on KVM and I'll be using that.

On 2021-11-04 7:39 a.m., Alvin Starr via talk wrote:
> As a general rule a hard disk image can be made to boot under both KVM 
> and VB or VMware.
> 
> The first problem you may have migrating is the fact that the disk 
> controllers may not be compatible between the physical system and the VM 
> engine you pick.
> Usually this can be solved by pre-installing a compatible windows 
> disk-controller before you make the image to try and boot.
> There are also physical-to-virtual tools from both VB and KVM(virt-p2v) 
> that will supposedly create a bootable VM image from a physical Windows 
> system.
> I have never been in a position where they were a usable solution 
> because they require physical access to the server and most times I was 
> repairing systems in nowhereland.
> 
> I have not yet had problems with video drivers but it is possible that 
> if you have a really unusual video card/interface that you may need to 
> install new video drivers.
> 
> Not sure about just taking the NTFS partition.
> You will likely need to take the boot partition and first few sectors of 
> the disk with its geometry.
> 
> VirtualBox is slicker than KVM(libvirt) but KVM is friendlier if you 
> want to build out a bunch of servers and like more programmatic control.
> VirtualBox also had( Been a while since I tried this )  better USB 
> drivers and tools for sharing data between your linux system and the 
> Windows VM.
> 
> I would suggest you try the P-to-V tools first and see how well they 
> work before chasing down the rabbit hole of installing drivers and doing 
> image copies.
> 
> A little "duckduckgo-ing" and.
> VB does not support moving physical to virtual... 
> https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows  but does give 
> instructions.
> here are a couple of other links.
> https://www.linux.org/threads/physical-to-virtual-p2v-using-virtualbox.10928/ 
> 
> https://www.joe0.com/2017/09/27/how-to-convert-physical-windows-computer-to-virtualbox-virtual-machine/ 
> 
> 
> virt-p2v is the KVM/libvirt tool https://libguestfs.org/virt-p2v.1.html
> 
> 
> On 2021-11-03 21:49, Michael Galea via talk wrote:
>> I have an old Win XP (32 bit) instance loaded with dozens of games, that
>> I would like to take traveling. I would like to run it in a VM.
>> The host will be a laptop running 64 bit debian i3 core.
>>
>> I would really like to just turn the XP NTFS partition into an image
>> file which I can run on the VM.  This would save me hundreds of hours of
>> reinstalling stuff.
>> The best bet for this seems to be using virtualbox, and there are
>> (pretty tricky) howtos for it. I do not think you can do this at all
>> with KVM.
>>
>> Has anyone ever managed something like this before? Let me learn from
>> your pain!
>>
>> PS: Another alternative is to install the higher performing KVM to 
>> install a fresh XP instance and use a commercial PC program mover to 
>> copy the games from the PC XP to the instance, via the network. There
>> are tools such as PcMover that claim to do this. Has anyone ever done
>> this before?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
> 


-- 
Michael Galea