I've been provided a .tar.gz archive containing the files from a VM file system (but not the filesystem itself) and I need to untar these into a raw disk image so that I may mount them as a VM.
How do I make an empty disk image and put a filesystem on it, and then untar the archive into it?
I suspect I'll then need to install a bootloader and create a swap partition too.
You have not specified that the archive is from which Virtual Machine file system. If you are working on VMWare Workstation, just add a new disk from the interface, boot the machine with any bootloader, copy the tar file inside it using any ftp s/w and then untar it. If it is an exact tar of a running virtual machine, then your machine will boot next time even without bootloader.
This is more of a strategy than a perfect manual, but it should help.
Build your "virtual computer", i.e. create an empty hard disk. Then, from my point of view, it is the best option to find out which Linux distribution is inside your .tar.gz-file. Imagine it is an openSUSE system, version 12.1 (it should work with any other distribution in a similar way). Download an original disk (CD) image for setting up a base system of your distribution in the right version and install it into your newly created VM. So you can create file systems and partitions (including swap), install grub or similar etc. and test the VM. Once this is done, boot into your VM with a Linux life system. Go to the "/"-folder of your VM (not the life-system's) and rename a number of folders (as root): bin, boot, etc, lib, opt, root, sbin, srv, tmp, usr, var (assuming non of those are on separate partitions) into something like bin-old, boot-old ... Now untar your old VM into the very same location. There should be new boot, bin ... folders right next to the old renamed ones. Now you need to change some files of your old VM in order to boot into the old system inside the new VM. Assuming the old VM was using grub, you e.g. need to adjust the files in /boot, while using /boot-old as help.
First I created a created a loopback (/dev/loop0) device from a 25GB blank raw disk image and partitioned it into a 20GB partition for the filesystem and the remainder for swap.
Remember to use kpartx on the loopback device to 'find' the new partitions:
# kpartx -a /dev/loop0
# ls /dev/mapper/
control loop0p1 loop0p2
I wasn't sure which file system to use so I conservatively chose to make an ext2 file system on the first partition:
# mkfs.ext2 /dev/mapper/loop0p1
mke2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
1313760 inodes, 5245214 blocks
262260 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
161 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8160 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
This filesystem will be automatically checked every 23 mounts or
180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.
Create a mount point and mount the loopback device partition:
# mkdir /mnt/disk
# mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt/disk
Change to the mount directory and untar the archive:
# cd /mnt/disk
# tar xzvf /path/to/disk_archive.tar.gz
Use chroot to mount the new disk image as a root filesystem:
# mount -t proc none /mnt/disk/proc
# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/disk/dev
# chroot /mnt/disk /bin/bash
Make any required changes to the file system (like installing the grub packages!)
Exit chroot and unmount and unloop everything:
# umount /mnt/disk/dev
# umount /mnt/disk/proc
# umount /mnt/disk
# kpartx -d /dev/loop0
# losetup -d /dev/loop0
Finally I created a VM with this as its hard drive. I used Super Grub2 Disk to resolve any further issues with the bootloader.
