On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Alan Chandler <a...@chandlerfamily.org.uk> wrote: > > I currently run a necessary Windows 7 (Home Premium) installation in a > VirtualBox virtual machine on my Debian Unstable desktop. Its OK, but I > have had the occasional glitch when Debian tries to upgrade by kernel > version and for one reason or another the VirtualBox kernel module hasn't > kept up. > > I would like to migrate to a KVM setup, where the required module is in the > mainline kernel. I feel that would be safer longer term. > > One problem, which I haven't satisfactorily solved so far, is backing up the > files on the disk in that virtual machine. The best I can do is back up the > entire file that represents the disk. However the vast majority of that > disk is not changing on a regular basis and at 120GB of the image in use, it > takes a lot of resource to back it up. I would much prefer some sort of > approach that allows me to copy only the recent changes to a rolling > backup/archive store I have set up for my normal (linux) desktop . > > A possibility that occurred to me is that I could make the disk used by the > virtual machine a raw image file on an LVM logical volume, which I use the > snapshot capability of to take a frozen snapshot of the disk file at some > moment in time. Mount that snapshot on the loopback device, so that I get > to see all the individual files and then back them up. However I am not > sure that would work, as, I presume, the disk image contains bootsectors and > stuff like that. Has anyone used this sort of approach, and if so how did > they get round the issue of device v filesystem.
I'm not sure whether either of these methods'll work with a Windows filesystem... 1) You can use VB's "shared folder" to copy the files to your host. 2) You can use qemu-nbd to mount a vdi as a loopback device. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAOdo=sypaeq0d+dvfmywhte2lpe7pmsgd-h9mkwfrcgyucp...@mail.gmail.com
