Converting a Virtual PC image to Parallels mac

Update 12/15/06: You might check out the new Parallels Transporter beta, http://forum.parallels.com/thread5999.html It looks like this will do all the below, but without the ftp
server in the middle?

For those of you who have a Virtual PC image that you just can’t live without, and upgraded from a PPC mac to an Intel mac (and thus Virtual PC to Parallels),
here’s a relatively quick way to convert the images.More information on how to use G4u is available at their home site.

Please note that you absolutely require at least Parallels build 1940 to run G4U.

  1. On your new mac, go to the Accounts control panel and create a user named “install”. Give it a password. You’ll need this account later.
  2. While you’re in the control panels, go to Sharing and enable the FTP server.
  3. On your OLD mac:
  4. download the g4u (”ghost for unix”) iso at http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-1.17.iso.zip . Unzip
  5. Fire up your Virtual PC, and capture the above ISO in your CDrom. Reboot if neccessary so that you boot off of it.
  6. Make a note of how large this disk image is.
  7. When you get a prompt, you want to copy your disk to your new server. Assuming you have one disk and one partition on this disk, use something like uploaddisk yournewmacip diskimage.gz wd0 .
  8. wd0 is the name that g4u knows your first disk as.
  9. diskimage.gz is the name your disk will be saved as on your new mac
  10. Wait until the disk is entirely copied. At this point you can close your virtual pc program.
  11. Now, go to your NEW mac
  12. Download the g4u (”ghost for unix”) iso at http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-1.17.iso.zip . Unzip
  13. Fire up Parallels and create a new guest OS. Give it a hard drive at least as large as what the Virutal PC guest had
  14. Boot your new GuestOS. Capture the G4U iso, and reboot the guest if necessary to boot it.
  15. When it’s finished booting, run the following command to download and unpack your disk image: slurpdisk localhost diskimage.gz
  16. Wait for this to finish.
  17. Uncapture the cd rom, and reboot your GuestOS.
  18. Go to your sharing control panel, and turn off FTP
  19. Go to your accounts panel, and delete the install account

At this point, you should have a working copy of your original Guest OS.

For more information, please see the G4U home page at http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

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RSS Trackback URL notarus | 10/11/2006 (3:31 pm)

General, Open Source, Software, mac

2 Comments

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  1. Gary

    Gary

    12/15/2006 | 8:51 pm

    1

    I’ve gotten the archive upload to work successfully, but when I attempt to import the image, I have to use the “new” Intel Mac’s IP address to make the connection, and once the transfer is done, it still provides an error, saying that the archive length was not correct. I suspect either the transfer is not completing, or something is not being written correctly, since every image I have attempted to create from the VPC image has been roughly 3GB in size, while the data that is claimed to transfer (specified drive size) is 15GB.

    Once complete, the machine attempts to boot in Parallels, but provides an error saying that there was a hardware error, and that the machine needs to reboot, but simply runs an endelss cycle, asking if I’d like to boot in Safe Mode (which provides the same error) or boot normally, continuing in an endless loop.

    Any insights?

    The method is ingenious, I would just really like to figure out why I’m so close to working, without actual success.

    Thanks,
    Gary

  2. djl

    djl

    12/12/2006 | 7:57 am

    2

    Thanks for this - just copying over now.
    It might be worth mentioning in your article that the PPC/old Mac needs to be connected via Ethernet for the FTP to work.
    The Intel Mac is fine on Airport/WLAN though.
    Cheers

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