Installing a vmdk under QEMU/KVM

[martin]

I've just completed a basic installation using QEMU/KVM rather than the documented VirtualBox in the Community License Package email. The enclosed PDF is my write-up for myself, but may be of use to others using QEMU/KVM in a Alma/Rocky/RHEL/Fedora environment.

user vms [Lifeboat].pdf

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[hb]

I've just completed a basic installation using QEMU/KVM rather than the documented VirtualBox in the Community License Package email. The enclosed PDF is my write-up for myself, but may be of use to others using QEMU/KVM in a Alma/Rocky/RHEL/Fedora environment.user vms [Lifeboat].pdf

You can also convert to qcow2:

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qemu-img convert -O qcow2 community-flat.vmdk $HOSTNAME.qcow2

If the input disk image is not recognized, you can throw a

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-f vmdk

at it .

[hajo]

... and you can also use a Linux (i've used Rocky) OS as base.

[martin]

The instructions ONLY work under Linux, hence "Alma/Rocky/RHEL/Fedora environment". I've not tried them under Debian or Ubuntu so can't guarantee other distros.

[dholm]

I installed it on Ubuntu 22.04 using this command:

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$ sudo virt-install --name=openvms \
    --machine=q35 \
    --vcpus=2 \
    --memory=6144 \
    --disk=/storage/scratch/libvirt/images/community-flat.vmdk,bus=sata,format=vmdk \
    --boot=uefi,loader=/usr/share/ovmf/OVMF.fd,loader_secure=no \
    --os-variant=generic \
    --graphics=none

The only problem I ran into is that even though I added "loader_secure=no" to the boot argument, UEFI inside the VM still required secure boot. Once I entered the UEFI boot menu and turned off secure boot, everything was great.