Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
John Summerfield wrote:
I looked at some images in /var/lib/xen/images/ and since they have partition tables and look, to me, just like disks, I copied part of my hard disk to /var/lib/xen/images/WindowsXP.img
The reason is that I want to try the Windows XP that came preinstalled, and copying /dev/sda for a length I calculated includes the entire /dev/sda1 partition seems a likely way to test it. These are the commands: dd if=/dev/sda of=/var/lib/xen/images/WindowsXP.img count=76597082 dd of=/var/lib/xen/images/WindowsXP.img seek=320072933376 bs=1 count=0
I don't understand this second command. What's the input? Are you typing something on stdin (eg. ^D)?
count=0 -- doesn't read anything. Its purpose is to make a 320 Gbyte file, to match the source disk in size. It becomes a sparse file, effectively with lots of zeroes between the end of data copied with the first command.
I've since edited the partition table with GNU Parted, it now looks like this: [root@potoroo ~]# parted /var/lib/xen/images/WindowsXP.img GNU Parted 1.8.6 Using /var/lib/xen/images/WindowsXP.img Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) print Model: (file) Disk /var/lib/xen/images/WindowsXP.img: 320GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 32.3kB 71.3GB 71.3GB primary ntfs boot
(parted) q [root@potoroo ~]#
It approximates to how I've copied Windows systems around on real hardware from time to time. If I were to copy that file to a real disk and boot in real hardware, I would fully expect it to work.
how embarrassing. I needed to copy about 80 Gbytes, and only copied half that.
Worse, the boot sector has grub in it.
The good news is that the system now boots grub sans menu. I typed in the necessary information to boot windows: chainloader (hd0,0)+1 boot
and windows boots all the way to a BSOD and the stuff on the screen recommends "chkdsk /f."
Hmm. Type to find a rescue system.