KVM/QEMU

Windows

agp440.sys killed my VMWare XP installation!

intelppm.dll blue screen of death -- http://kvm.qumranet.com/kvmwiki/Windows_ACPI_Workaround

Install VBEMP x86 Project Universal VESA/VBE Video Display Driver to get different resolutions on virtual machine

Startup script:

# 3M RFID 810
usbdev=0403:6001

sudo chown -R $USER /proc/bus/usb/*

kvm -m 512 -hda win-xp.vmdk -no-acpi -std-vga -monitor stdio -usb -usbdevice host:$usbdev

USB sniffing

info usbhost

VirtualBox

Seems to be best supported right now (package in Debian, optional drivers for Windows, starting unmodified VMWare machines -- after you guess right settings that is!)

Windows ACPI problem - agp440.sys problem
How to migrate existing Windows installations to VirtualBox - it's applicable to other emulators as well!

OpenVZ

Add disk space to VE

First, resize logical volume:

root@koha-hw:~# vgextend -L +80G /dev/vg/vz
vgextend: invalid option -- L
  Error during parsing of command line.

root@koha-hw:~# lvextend -L +80G /dev/vg/vz
  Extending logical volume vz to 100.00 GB
  Logical volume vz successfully resized

root@koha-hw:~# resize2fs /dev/vg/vz 
resize2fs 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
Filesystem at /dev/vg/vz is mounted on /vz; on-line resizing required
old desc_blocks = 2, new_desc_blocks = 7
Performing an on-line resize of /dev/vg/vz to 26214400 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/vg/vz is now 26214400 blocks long.

root@koha-hw:~# df -h /vz/
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg-vz      99G   20G   79G  21% /vz

Then, take a look how much space does VEs take:

root@koha-hw:~# vzlist -o veid,diskspace,diskspace.s,diskspace.h,diskinodes,diskinodes.s,diskspace.h
      VEID   DQBLOCKS DQBLOCKS.S DQBLOCKS.H   DQINODES DQINODES.S DQBLOCKS.H
    212052   11717220   15728640   20971520      61001     286527   20971520
    212226    6407804   10485760   12582912      69011     435472   12582912

alternativly, you can also execute df inside VEs:

root@koha-hw:~# vzlist -o veid -H | xargs -i sh -c "echo --{}-- ; vzctl exec {} df -h"
--212052--
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
simfs                  15G   12G  3.9G  75% /
tmpfs                 2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs                 2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev/shm
--212226--
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
simfs                  10G  6.2G  3.9G  62% /
tmpfs                 2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs                 2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev/shm

next, we will set diskpace on both VEs (becase we want them to share all available resources) to new logical volume size:

root@koha-hw:~# vzlist -o veid -H | xargs -i vzctl set {} --diskspace 100G:100G --save
Saved parameters for VE 212052
Saved parameters for VE 212226

This VEs are not in production, and one is development version of another. When we move to production, we want to enforce more strict limit on disk usage, to protect production machine from running out of disk space in case the development one goes wild.

VMWare

Convert image to monolithic growable disk

This format is supported by other emulators, so it's a best choice.

dpavlin@llin:/rest/vmware/winxp$ vmware-vdiskmanager -r Windows\ XP\ Professional.vmdk -t 0 /mnt/usb/vmware/win-xp.vmdk 
Using log file /tmp/vmware-dpavlin/vdiskmanager.log
Creating a monolithic growable disk '/mnt/usb/vmware/win-xp.vmdk'
  Convert: 57% done.

Resize disk image

dpavlin@llin:/mnt/usb/vmware$ qemu-img info win-xp.vmdk
(VMDK) image open: flags=0x2 filename=win-xp.vmdk
image: win-xp.vmdk
file format: vmdk
virtual size: 3.0G (3221225472 bytes)
disk size: 3.0G

There is a way to extend image using only qemu-img, but that involves converting image to raw and appending zeros at end to produce larger image. However, we will do that using VMWare's vmware-vdiskmanager

dpavlin@llin:/mnt/usb/vmware$ vmware-vdiskmanager -x 6Gb win-xp.vmdk
Using log file /tmp/vmware-dpavlin/vdiskmanager.log
  Grow: 100% done.
The old geometry C/H/S of the disk is: 6241/16/63
The new geometry C/H/S of the disk is: 12483/16/63
Disk expansion completed successfully.

WARNING: If the virtual disk is partitioned, you must use a third-party
         utility in the virtual machine to expand the size of the
         partitions. For more information, see:
         http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1647

This will make disk unbootable, so we will have to resize partition. Download GParted live CD and resize partition using it...

kvm -m 512 -hda win-xp.vmdk -no-acpi -std-vga -cdrom /rest/iso/gparted-live-0.3.9-4.iso -boot d

Convert vmdk to qcow

dpavlin@llin:/mnt/usb/vmware$ qemu-img convert -O qcow win-xp.vmdk win-xp.qcow
(VMDK) image open: flags=0x2 filename=win-xp.vmdk
dpavlin@llin:/mnt/usb/vmware$ ls -al win-xp.*
-rw-r--r-- 1 dpavlin dpavlin 3190906880 Oct  9 17:41 win-xp.qcow
-rw------- 1 dpavlin dpavlin 3208577024 Oct  9 17:35 win-xp.vmdk