Cannot boot SuSE 10.3 after convert VirtPC to VMware

[delovelady]

All, I have an installation of openSUSE 10.3 that's been set up with a significant number of applications and data, all working on a Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine. However, M$VPC is kind of quirky and doesn't have good networking capabilities, so I desire to move this to VMware, a platform I trust and know well.

I have tried to convert this via VMware converter 3.0.3 (latest as of this writing), and it went along fairly well, but I cannot seem to boot the resultant image. When booting, the openSUSE machine allows me to select openSUSE or Failsafe mode (as normal), and then seems to hang for either option. When I press Escape, the following messages seem to indicate the problem (or maybe just a part of it):
> Trying manual resume from /dev/sda1
> resume device /dev/sda1 not found (ignoring)
> Waiting for device /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Virtual_HD-part to appear: . . . Could not find /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Virtual_HD-part2.
> Want me to fall back to /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Virtual_HD-part2? (Y/n)

Neither Y nor N response to this seems to bypass the problem, so I searched and found this Novell support article via Google: Lock, Stock and Barrel: Moving SUSE Linux Enterprise to a new Machine | Novell User Communities

That helped assure me that the disks can be read, however the result of following those instructions was that I got a new error when doing mkinitrd ("Failed to open dir /sys/block at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/Bootloader/Tools.pm line 280.") ... and the boot process does not change.

Any clues what else I might try in order to effect this migration? I'd also be willing to go through some other migration process to move the data/applications/configurations to vmware (or to physical machine), but I have not found any help for that via internet searches.

Desperatly Seeking SuSE.

[gogalthorp]

VM's normally require or at least recommend special drivers for the guest OS. Simply taking the image from one VM to another even doing a "conversion" may require removing the drivers first. Just a thought. I think it would be easier to simply reinstall the OS in the new VMware VM.

[delovelady]

Thanks for your reply; I appreciate it.

Do you have a recommendation for ensuring the same OS products are installed, at least? I have found reference to autoyast, but have not seen how to build an autoyast configuration. And there may be other methods. Looking for general advice.

Regards,
D

[gogalthorp]

Don't know what you mean by OS products???

If you mean the configuration ie the Applications and configuration. It would need to be re done as per the specifications. What no specifications

Wing it. Do a best guess of the configuration and adjust as you come up short. And write out the specs this time.

[delovelady]

Sorry. I don't subscribe to the Microsoft-style standard "Try this and see if it will work" approach to problem resolution. I will find another way, or scratch the project.

But I do appreciate the advice, and the willingness to help.

[gogalthorp]

If you don't have specifications then you are winging it already.

If you have specifications then all is good and it should be no problem at all to install a new system according to those specs.

[delovelady]

I have decided to use rpm -qa | sort > /path/some-file on both systems... diff will tell me where the differences lie, and I can document the desired state while correcting the target platform manually. Then it's a matter of what's in /etc (mostly), which is relatively benign in this case.

It may not be ideal, but it sure beats the guess that was suggested above! (OK, I guess that's an opinion.)

D