Migrating Windows XP guest - VM does not boot

[gustavo]

Hello to all,


I am a newbie to virtualization, and found Proxmox solution. So i installed and give it a try.

The installed PVE is :

Proxmox Virtual Environment
Version 2.0-27/8d4f53a0

Problem description:

I want to migrate an existing physical Windows XP machine to pve. So, i started to follow the wiki howto.
I am able to create a new VM, and migrate the disk image into the Proxmox server.
When I try to boot the VM, I get an OK message in the log.
I open the console, and the boot process stops at "Booting from Disk" message.
The CPU usage for that VM stays at 100%, all the time. I end up shutting down the VM.
Bellow I enumerate all the steps taken to do the migration. so far with no sucess.

The physical server is Windows XP Professional SP3, on a NTFS formatted partition.


Steps tested so far:

So far, I have tried these steps from the Wiki:

1. How to migrate directly from a Windows physical machine to a VM raw file using SSH
2. Physical (running) server to Proxmox VE (KVM) using SelfImage
3. VMware to Proxmox VE (KVM)

All VMs where created using the Proxmox web interface.
For all steps I have done the mergeide step, and created a partition slightly bigger than the physical disk.
All migration steps concluded sucessfully (no errors whatsoever)
For steps 2 and 3, being a live process, I have turned off antivirus. But yes, i know it is a "static" file copy.
For step 3 I have tried running the resulting VMDK file in VMWare Player, and it went without problems, I could boot the machine.

Could this by an incompatibility in the migrated file?
How do i mount the qcow2 file in Proxmox shell and check if the files are OK?


I appreciate any help you might have regarding this issue, as I am stuck.
Any output you might wish from my installation I will gladly post here.

Thank You very much,
Best Regards,

Gustavo

 

[gustavo]

[UPDATE]

I have recreated the steps for migration using Selfimage. This time I tried to boot the Windows XP guest disabling the option "KVM hardware virtualization" under Options for the VM.

The VM does boot, but.... very slowly. Too slow.

In previous investigations, i stumbled upon the Virtio drivers.
Can i install them into a migrated (and apparently bootable) Windows XP guest?
[UPDATE] Yes.

Will it improve performance?
[UPDATE] So far and for this VM, no. I am still getting the host cpu throttled up to 100%, and the guest vcpu below that level (50% up) . I can't solve the problem.

How can i boot the VM enabling the "KVM hardware virtualization" option?
[UPDATE] I still can't enable KVM virtualization on this guest VM. Installing a windows guest VM from scratch allows me this option, and the performance is normal. Almost like running on a physical host. Also has the virtio drivers. Nice...


Thank You,
Best Regards

Gustavo

 

[gustavo]

Hello to all,

I have updated my PROXMOX server, and all reported problems seem to have gone.

Thank You.

 

[dlopeztassara]

Hello Gustavo.

I'm facing the same problems. I see that you update the proxmox server, but I have installed the proxmox server recently and the first thing that I did was update it. However, I try to update again, but is a server in production, I'm worry by the consecuences of the update, because this server is a node of a cluster, and I don't know if I have to updated all nodes or not.

Well, I'm looking for another solution.

My situation is this:

- I migrate a 32 bits Debian server using Clonezilla
- At booting, the server holds in "Booting from hard disk..." and never ends.

 

[gustavo]

Hi dlopeztassara,

Like i said in the OP, i am a relative newbie to Proxmox, my experiments are home made. Keeping that in mind, these are my thoughts on your question.
In your post you mentioned that you migrated a 32 bit Debian server using Clonezilla.
How about this method? (migrate directly from a Windows physical machine to a VM raw file using SSH)
Have you tried it? Beeing Linux, you may skip the part where it says "download SystemRescueCD", since Linux already has all those tools.
I am assuming you have network conditions necessary for completing the transfer.

Beeing a production server is not the best environment to carry out these kinds of actions. Ideally you should have a testing environment, which tries to replicate the most your production environment, where you would try these steps without worries of messing things
If the server is a node of a cluster, you might add this testing environment also as a node for testing purposes. It's only a guess as i have no such environment in place for my installation. THis should have more information about that.

That message you are having on boot: have you created the disk as RAW and the controller as IDE? (I think Debian already has VIRTIO driver support , or at least i remember installing it in one of my migrations.)


I have a physical Debian 32 server on an old laptop. I will try migrating it to proxmox, and report my experience.

Good luck and best regards,

Gustavo

 

[dlopeztassara]

OK, Gustavo. Thank you for the information. I had not notice that the migration method migrate directly from a Windows physical machine to a VM raw file using SSH worked in Linux too. Actually, I see that this method was for Windows, and I skipped it. Well, I gonna try it.

And, don't worry about the cluster in production, I don't gonna update the operating systems. I will just migrate a physical machine to a virtual machine, there are very low risks in that.

Thank you for your response. I'll comment about the results when a finish it.