Migrate Debian 9.3 VirtualBox VM to Linode
According to https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/disk-images/migrating-a-server-to-your-linode/ it's possible to "You can even migrate virtualized servers created with products like VirtualBox or VMware.".
That's exactly what I want to do. I have a Debian 9.3 VM from VirtualBox which I would like to host on a Linode server. However, I haven't found much that explains how to actually do it.
Does anyone here have any pointers for me? Thank you very much.
1 Reply
hmorris
Linode Staff
Hey @KoolKoala
I'm sure there may be a few different ways out there but here is what I've done in the past.
1. Prepare your Debian VirtualBox image
- You'll want to ensure you have openssh is installed
- apt-get install openssh-server
- systemctl start ssh.service
- systemctl enable ssh.service
2. Download and boot from Finnix(In VirtualBox)
- Download Finnix here (Click the "x86/AMD64")
- In VirtualBox go to Settings --> Storage --> Click Empty --> Click the CD icon, and then select Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file --> Select your Finnix ISO, and then click OK--> Boot your VM.
You are now in Finnix!
3. Now begin to prepare your Linode.
- Create a Linode
- Create a configuration profile
- Create your new Disks
- You will want to create 1 ext4 disk and 1 swap disk (size of the EXT4 disk has to be big enough to accommodate the data on the VM)
- Go back to your configuration profile --> Under Block Device Assignment assign the EXT4 disk to sda and the swap to sdb --> Save changes
4. Begin the data transfer.
- Boot your Linode into Rescue mode
- Access your Linode in LISH and enter the commands below
root@ttyS0:~# passwd
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
root@ttyS0:~# service ssh start
[*]
[*] IMPORTANT: The 'root' and 'finnix' accounts have been disabled, and
[*] passwords for these accounts must be set for remote administration.
[*]
[*] Please be sure to use 'passwd' to set a password after sshd is started.
[*]
[*] Generating SSH2 RSA host key... done
[*] Generating SSH2 DSA host key... done
[*] Generating SSH2 ECDSA host key... done
[*] Generating SSH2 ED25519 host key... done
[*] Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server... sshd done
root@ttyS0:~# mount /media/sda
Your Linode is now ready to accept the image :)
- On your VM, boot it into Finnix and execute the same steps but instead add a '1' at the end of the mount command like so:
root@ttyS0:~# mount /media/sda1
root@ttyS0:~# passwd
root@ttyS0:~# service ssh start
root@ttyS0:~# mount /media/sda1
- On the VM run this command to begin the data transfer:
rsync -avz /media/sda1/ root@$linodeip:/media/sda/
- Once that completes, then you will want to edit your fstab to look similar to this:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#<file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda / ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sdb none swap sw 0 0
Boot up and you should be good to go :)
I ran into an issue where with networking on first boot, I was getting this error:
[FAILED] Failed to start Raise network interfaces.
I ran ip a and found that my eth0 interface was named enp0s3: instead of eth0. To resolve that, I ran the command below and rebooted which fixed it:
ln -s /dev/null /etc/udev/rules.d/80-net-setup-link.rules
Hope that helps!