Can Parallels use images created by dd

Discussion in 'General Questions' started by rsavage, Oct 26, 2007.

  1. rsavage

    rsavage Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    Hello,

    I am having some trouble installing OS/2 3.0 among others. Quick qustion, can I just take an existing system, image teh hard drive using something like dd (dd if=/dev/hda1 of= disk.hdd) and then use that hard disk image?

    Thanks
     
  2. Alicia

    Alicia Parallels Team

    Messages:
    683
    Hello,

    the .hdd file is created once the new VM is set up. And then you have to install your guest OS for the VM. Doesn't it work?

    Best regards,
    Alicia.
     
  3. rsavage

    rsavage Bit poster

    Messages:
    2
    I have the diskette version of OS/2. The installation in the VM fails on the third disk. I have read this is because the disks do not use a standard format but an XFD format. What I would like to do is install OS/2 on an old machine, and then take an image of that hard drive by plugging it into a LInux box and using dd to make the image: eg dd if=/dev/hdd1 of=os2.img. I thought I had read somewhere that Parallels uses a raw disk image.
     
  4. Alicia

    Alicia Parallels Team

    Messages:
    683
    Hello,

    the operation you've described is theoretically posiible, but I suppose it's better be performed in a following way:
    make an image of the installed OS/2 as you wanted to do. Then put it on some CD/DVD to make it possible to use in a VM. Then boot the VM with that CD/DVD using Linux Live CD and copy the image to the VM's HD again with dd.

    Best regards,
    Alicia.
     
  5. Scrutch2001

    Scrutch2001 Junior Member

    Messages:
    17
    This procedure might work to get OS/2 into a virtual machine. However, I don't know if the emulation of OS/2 would work or not. The video driver in OS/2 might not be compatible with the video hardware parallels workstation emulates. The new VM might not even boot of it's using the wrong video driver.

    Steve Crutchfield
     

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