vConverter esx kernel panic

So I’ve had to migrate a couple of machines from physical Linux hosts, to VMware powered guests. Pretty straight forward, no?

Kinda – the conversion itself; getting the machine configured and the data from the disks pushed into the image files, is not a problem. Booting the machine after this is done might be though.

Loading sd_mod.ko module
Loading jbd.ko module
Loading ext3.ko module
Mounting /proc filesystem
Mounting sysfs
Creating device files
Mounting tmpfs on /dev
Creating root device
Trying to resume from /dev/sda5
Unable to access resume device (/dev/sda5)
echo: cannot open /proc/suspend2/do_resume for write: 2
Mounting root filesystem /dev/root
mount: error 6 mounting ext3 flags defaults
well, retrying without option flags
mount: error 6 mounting ext3
well, retrying without any flags
mount: error 6 mounting ext3
switch to new root
ERROR opening /dev/console!!!!: 2
unmounting old /proc
unmounting old /sys
switchroot: mount failed: 22
Initrd finished
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
_

Mandriva 2007 crashing during initial boot after conversion to virtual environment

So after googling the issue a bit and getting some assistance from my goto Guy with all Linux, it was clear that the issue revolved around missing SCSI controller settings.

Now that I’ve got it booting, the required steps was the following:

1. Boot the machine to rescue environment from the distribution disks. I used the old 2007 disks from Mandriva, hoping it would be a matching environment.
2. Mount your local disks to /mnt etc – in Mandriva there’s a menu option to mount existing partitions, I used that.
3. Enter console and chroot into your local environment.
4. vi /etc/modprobe.conf
5. Find any and all occurrences of scsi_hostadapter and change the line to reflect what your using.  My final file looks like this:
   alias eth0 pcnet32
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
alias scsi_hostadapter BusLogic
remove snd-hda-intel /sbin/modprobe -r snd-pcm-oss; /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove snd-hda-intel
install snd-hda-intel /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-hda-intel && { /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss; /bin/true; }
install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd; /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd; /bin/true
install scsi_hostadapter /sbin/modprobe ata_piix; /sbin/modprobe ahci; /sbin/modprobe BusLogic; /bin/true
alias eth1 pcnet32
6. Then we need to make a new boot image:
   cd /boot
mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-2.6.17-5mdv.img 2.6.17-5mdv
   (mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-2.x.y-zz.img 2.x.y-zz)
7. Finally, Mandriva 2007 installs are a blast from the past; using lilo. So for it to be happy, enter lilo, hit enter and watch as it’s updating your MBR.
8. You VM should now be able of booting, leave it to finish scanning the file systems and such.

references:

http://virtualaleph.blogspot.com/2007/05/virtualize-linux-server-with-vmware.html