Migrate Ubuntu 10.04 installed on Machine to .VDI for Virtual Box HDD

Question

I was using a Sony laptop with Ubuntu 10.04 installed on the machine. I have just bought a Mac and I will be using Ubuntu 10.04 as my primary development OS by virtualizing it using VirtualBox.

Now, my requirement is, I had a near perfect development environment setup on my Ubuntu box and I don't want to install the packages, apps, setting etc again on my VirtualBox VM. I know there are ways to export apps, setting etc, but is there some app which will actually create a VDI disk for my VirtualBox which, when I plug in to my VirtualBox, I will get the old Ubuntu on my VM.

Answer 1

I think Remastersys will be the best option, since it will run as an app in Ubuntu.

Doc on Remastersys

Answer 2

The way I would do this is a variant on the above method.

1. Use clonezilla to take an image of the Ubuntu Machine
2. Move this image to a location accessible to the as-yet uncrated virtual machine. (I would put this on a secondary hard disk attached to the VM)
3. Use clonezilla in the virtual machine to restore the image from the secondary hard disk to the one you want to use.

I'm in the current process of writing a tutorial for doing this with a Windows Machine but it will work for Ubuntu too.

Answer 3

1. Shutdown linux machine.
2. Use Clonezilla (or any livecd, using dd [google dd for more details] ) to get the image of the harddisk.
3. Get the file to your macos and add the file to the virtualbox
4. delete /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules as the MAC address of the network card has changed (apparantly)