Prepare a system in a VM, then move it to a real machine?

[KenSharp]

Hi,

I basically want to do this:

1. Install an Ubuntu Server system in a VM.
2. Set up all the required packages and options.
3. Move the VM partition to a physical partition on a real server.

Can this be done? I have Googled around for an answer but most the answers I find are disappointing or plain ludicrous.

The VirtualBox manual offers no help.

Any help much appreciated!

[Lauscher]

Hello,

there are some experimental features of vboxmanage: type in your terminal 'vboxmanage internalcommands' and you find useful commands like 'createrawvmdk' and 'converttoraw' that should help you.

At the moment I don't find converttoraw in the manual, but maybe you have more luck. Otherwise, you can use createrawvmdk to get access on a physical hard disk, and copy your files.

You may have problems with the rights to get access; one possibility to solve them is to get member of the group 'disk'. But you shouldn't be member of 'disk' all time, it's not sure.

[SeijiSensei]

I'd use rsync after you've created the machine image you want.

Start by installing the identical version of Ubuntu on the new machine. Make sure the image is up-to-date by running:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

after installation.

Now make sure you can see the new machine over the network from inside the VM. Make sure it's also up-to-date then transfer the files by running:

cd /
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo rsync -av . newserver_ip_address:/

All the files in the VM will be copied over to the new server. I'd probably exclude /boot and the transient directories like /proc and /sys by using

sudo rsync -av . newserver_ip_address:/ --exclude=/boot --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys