Re: [Qemu-devel] Fedora core 2 filesystem

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 02:29:03PM +0100, Benito wrote:
> I have a question regarding qemu. Is it possible to take a working
> root filesystem ( old machine running Fedora core 2 ) and emulate it
> with qemu
> on a new PC running a modern Linux distribution ? If so , is it
> going to be a nightmare to accomplish , or is there support to do
> this already ?

Yes, that is possible.  It's called physical-to-virtual (p2v) migration.

The process is:
1. Gather old machine hardware configuration info, mainly from lspci(1)
2. Copy disk contents into a raw image file, typically using dd(1)
3. Configure a new guest with hardware that matches old host as closely
   as possible.  Most important are network card, storage controller,
   and display adapter since the OS may fail to boot up to a useful
   level if it lacks drivers.

If your hardware is not emulated by QEMU, try rtl8139 for NIC, IDE for
storage, and cirrus VGA for display.  These are old devices and many
guest OSes ship with drivers for them.

Keep the old machine around during this process so you can go back if
you hit a hurdle.

Good luck! :)

Stefan