can a VM be restored from a .qcow2 disk image?

[jesus614]

Hello, I had a problem with my managed VPS provider, the data was lost and I am not responsible.

It only sent me a disk image of the virtual machine in .qcow2 format and I have no idea how to use it to recover a cpanel account that I had there (1 website).

Could I use promox to restore this VM or at least mount the drive and explore the files and save the data?

 

[Dunuin]

You could create a new VM, then use qm importdisk and qm rescan YourVMID. It should then show up for that VM as unused disk which you could attach using the webUI. See: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/qm.1.html

You also might want to boot as Live Linux ISO inside the VM, as the qcow2 disk might not boot with wrong VM options.

 

[fastrick]

I have a similar issue where I need to mount a previously used HDD in Proxmox after reinstalling. The HDD (4TB) was originally used for OMV, and it contains the following files:

- /dump
- /images/112/vm-112-disk-0.qcow2
- /lost+found
- /private
- /snippets
- /template

Based on my research, I discovered that the .qcow2 file (1.5TB) stores the VM data. I found some YouTube tutorials on how to restore it, but I don't have enough storage space to restore the VM to another HDD. Therefore, I need to utilize the main HDD (4TB) instead.

When I attempt to mount the disk from scratch in Proxmox, I only have the option to "Wipe Disk," which would erase all data. My question is: Is it possible to mount the HDD as it was in the previous installation, so I can access the OMV VM in Proxmox?

 

[VictorSTS]

The 4TB disk should be mounted in a path in your Proxmox host, let's suppose /mnt/disk4tb. What I would do is:

- Create a VM with id 112. Install a similar OS to the one that ran the qcow2 disk (to be sure that I can read the filesystem).
- Add a directory type storage to Proxmox pointing to the path /mnt/disk4tb and make sure "disk image" is enabled in "Content".
- Check that browsing to that storage in the webUI does show the qcow2 disk.
- In Proxmox host run qm rescan 112. The disk should be added as "unused" to the VM. Attach the disk the VM.
- Boot the VM and mount the filesystem of the qcow2 disk, check it's contents, copy what I need, etc. Maybe even make the VM boot from that qcow2 disk.

 

[Dunuin]

The 4TB disk should be mounted in a path in your Proxmox host, let's suppose /mnt/disk4tb.

And you need to mount that yourself using the CLI by adding a new line to the /etc/fstab or something similar. The GUI only allows you to work with empty disks.

 

[fastrick]

The 4TB disk should be mounted in a path in your Proxmox host, let's suppose /mnt/disk4tb. What I would do is:

- Create a VM with id 112. Install a similar OS to the one that ran the qcow2 disk (to be sure that I can read the filesystem).
- Add a directory type storage to Proxmox pointing to the path /mnt/disk4tb and make sure "disk image" is enabled in "Content".
- Check that browsing to that storage in the webUI does show the qcow2 disk.
- In Proxmox host run qm rescan 112. The disk should be added as "unused" to the VM. Attach the disk the VM.
- Boot the VM and mount the filesystem of the qcow2 disk, check it's contents, copy what I need, etc. Maybe even make the VM boot from that qcow2 disk.

I did it but the system doesn't boot. So I converted the qcow2 file to raw and mount it. The file inside is just from the openmediavault, so it doesn't have any filesystem. So I solved it the hard way: I mounted the raw file and made upload of all files to backup on the cloud.