Install OVA file as a physical installation

syklops

Wasn't sure where to put this but considering the OVA in question is debian here seemed like as a good a place to start as any.

I have an ova file which is an open virtualisation format, similar I believe to a vmdk file. On it contains debian with some customised tools. Originally it was meant to be installed into a virtual system but we want to install it on a physical standalone device. Does anyone know how easy or even how feasible it is to install the OVA as a standalone device?

Edit: Its actually an OVF file not OVA.

Stuxnet

I dont think you can, but what you possibly could do is run it on your hypervisor and clone it making a bootable iso, (possible tools, clonezilla, remastersys) which in turn you could use on a physical machine.

Im open to correction, or more glamorous way to achieve a bootbable iso/img

Knasher

Never tried this, so I could just be talking out of my ass. But if it was me I'd probably just get a live cd on a usb stick and boot up both the VM and the computer using this, both connected to the same network. Then transfer the image using dd and netcat to read and write on their respective ends. After that you'd remount the dd image on the new computer, chroot into it and fix and UUID changes in the fstab file , mount those and regenerate the bootloader config. Might also need to regernate your initcpio image.

EDIT: I realised that I'm assuming that you want to maintain your current partition layout and sizes in the new machine, if this isn't the case than rsync might be a better fit.

EDIT 2: You may also want to remove vmware tools (or equivalent) in the ovf image if you have them installed before you start this process. Thinking about it, the rsync route is very similar to how you go about installing arch. So the arch installation guide might be a somewhat handy reference. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

syklops

I was told unequivocably that it could not be done.

And so I am doing it. I have nearly got it working. I'll post my steps here when finished.

syklops

An OVA is a tarball of an OVF file and a VMware VMDK. To convert an OVA to an ISO, do the following:

untar the OVA
Mount the vmdk using Vmware. To do this, do File>mount virtual drive, select a mount point(/mnt) and click ok.
Once you have the mounted filesystem, do: mkisofs -o /tmp/MyISO.iso /mnt/
Once it has been created, don't forget to unmount your mounted virtual drive.

Note: This simply makes the filesystem into an ISO. To make it bootable, the mkisofs command requires additional switches.

Stuxnet

Kudos, and so simple, I'm impressed
good job !

azzeretti

Boot the VM into clonezilla and dd up to an ssh host. Then, on the physical server, do the same but restore the image. That or you could get away with covering to qcow2 or raw (qemu can do this) , mounting it and then dd it.