VMWare

[warrenonline]

This might be a dumb question, but I'm new to virtualization...

I'm running VMware Server on a box I have at home. I've made a virtual machine that mirrors my VPSLink Debian box on it. I would have run OpenVZ instead of VMware, but I want to have some virtual Windows machines.

Is there a way to replace the VPSLink image with the image from my VMware box once I have it exactly like it want it ?

[Defenestrator]

Short answer: no.

[DJ 2501]

You can try to tar your entire / structure then upload it to the vps server and untar as root.

That will replace everything on your file system with the file system from your home box.

But Im sure the vps link has custom things build into the OS so it would prolly break it.

[kelvinn]

Warrenonline:

The only way you *might* be able to get away with it is if you have a Xen VPS, and only if VPSLink doesn't use custom Xen kernels, which I'm pretty sure they do. You could either tar it all up, or use something like rsnapshot.

However, this isn't going to be pretty if it even maybe works.

[matth@vpslink]

No. VMWare virtualizes at the machine level and OpenVZ at the OS level. Therefore, just copying the image into your VPS will not work. You could try and make a tarball of your root filesystem as suggested, but many filesystems (/dev, /proc) and configurations in /etc will have to be changed, and it's not worth the trouble. May I ask why you want to play with the VPS image in VMWare instead of on the server? Is there a Linux distribution template that we don't currently offer that you are looking for?