I have a failed hard drive that has (or had ) Rocky Linux 9.2 as a host OS and KVM running OpenVMS OS. Now I have no other way to recover my system from a non-bootable clone. There are three .qcow2 files I managed to copy from the clone to an external HDD, then connected that HDD to a Windows PC, where I installed the Bitberry utility, and used that utility to recover those 3 image files. To my surprise two files were converted to .img files, while the third - to a .gpt file. What is that .gpt file and how can I recover its contents?
Thank you!
Perhaps ask the bitberry folks on what the “gpt” file is. All gpt really is is a kind of replacement for mbr. Why the tool made a “gpt” file is unclear. You would need to ask them.
I would suggest next time instead of using bitberry, you use tools native to Rocky Linux on another system.
qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O raw image.qcow2 image.img
Hello Nazunalika, and thank you for your response! Unfortunately (at least as of now) I do not have another Linux system available: this was the very first one I have been using for porting our software, and the HDD died on me before I figured out the right way for backing up the system with the VM. That is why there is no other choice to recover my files beyond recovering the “clone”. If that clone (made by Clonezilla) was - as I expected it to be - bootable - I would have simply use it, but alas - it does not want to boot. Anyway, thank you for your suggestion!
If you still have the qcow2 files, and they are not damaged, it should be possible to get them back, e.g. set up a linux partition and, as then as root
qemu-img info /vms/vmg/vmg01.qcow2
Gerry, thank you! Yes, I do have those files and it seems like they are intact. However - as I do not have experience with Linux in general and with KVM in particular. So, correct me if I am wrong: I have to install a new Linux+KVM system, and then what? Create a VM with as many disks as I had originally and replace the new .qcow2 files with the new ones? If this is not what you meant, could you please elaborate to explain the process in better detail?
I think the idea is to “attach” or “import” the qcow2 files. You create a new vm guest (an xml file), but instead of telling it to create new virtual disks, you tell it to “–import” the qcom2 files.
Think of it another way, you run lots of vm guests, how would you do disaster recovery if they all got deleted by mistake?
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