Karanbir Singh wrote:
With Linux you can use most of the usual backup/ restore procedures that you would use with physical machines (tar,cpio, rsync, etc.) and you have to deal with the same problems of getting a working disk driver in the initrd image and installing grub that you would have with real machines. Is there a generic tool to do those two things easier than booting an install CD in rescue mode and doing it by hand?
I suppose if you knew what modules you are going to need, then doing it at the same time as the VM is created would be possible. If not, then its a bit of a mismatch. Perhaps something to take on as a small weekend project ?
The ideal thing would be for the installer to have a re-install mode where it just does the the hardware detect, builds the modprobe.conf file and initrd image, and installs grub on the boot drive assuming that you've already copied an otherwise working system into place. A check the the boot partition really has a kernel in the right place and that /etc/fstab lists labels or partition names that really exist could save a few reboot attempts too. You could run this from the install disk's rescue mode.