Red Hat Physical to Virtual Problem. Cannot boot new VM image.

[Jimboba]

Hi everyone
I P2V’d a Linux server using VMware Convertor 4.0.1.
I manually added to the details for the Linux Helper Server and successfully P2V’d to an ESX 3.5.0 317866 host.
Couldn’t find too much on this problem of linux conversion (old Linux) but found the VMware community post “How to successfully P2V a Linux Box with VMware Converter Enterprise Edition” which helped obtain an image of the physical server.

The error i am seeing is:

Booting ‘Red Hat Linux Advanced Server (2.4.9-e.34smp)’
Root (hd0,2)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x5
Kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.34smp ro root=/dev/sda5
Error 17 Cannot mount selected partition
Press any key to continue...

Not really sure what to do next. I was thinking maybe I need to look at the grub file?
I have been working with VM products for just over four years and with Linux for a year and a half but have never really looked at this type of issue hence I’m having this problem.
Any help or insight to point me in the right direction would be appreciated.
Thanks very much.

[Lazydog]

Is this VM image an exact copy of the physical box?

[seacliff]

Root (hd0,2)

boot from hd0, partition 2

Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x5

doesn't know the type of partition. On RHEL, 5 is an extended partition. Is that the case?

Kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.34smp ro root=/dev/sda5

tries to boot off /dev/sda5, do you have any?

I would try to reinstall grub and see if it can fix itself.

[Jimboba]

Hi Seacliff. Thanks for the advice. You nudged me in the direction i needed to go. The grub.conf had to be modified to get this vm server to start.
the physical server is still in production so i ssh'd onto it and had a look at the grub file on it. They were both identical as i expected they would be.
Thisis the funny part, i modified the grub.conf file with the following changes: i had to change boot=/dev/sda3 to sda2, and root (hd0,2) to (hd0,1)
I have attached a before and after screenshot. Must be something to do with the way the virtual disk are created. So happy i got this working. Cheers!
Grub before change.jpgGrub after change.jpg

[seacliff]

I'm glad I could point you in the right direction.