VM will not boot after exporting from ESXi in VirtualBox

[fishface]

I have a ESXi VMWare Centos7 VM which I exported from ESXi using the Template > Export OVF Template function, I then import this into Virtualbox but it fails to boot correctly, it says the following

Code: Select all

[dracut-initqueue[263]: Warning: Could not boot.
dracut-initqueue[]: Warning: /dev/mapper/vg00-root root does not exist.
dracut-initqueue[263]: Warning: /dev/mapper/vg00 /swap does not exist.
dracut-initqueue[263]: Warning: /dev/mapper/root does not exist.
Starting Dracut Emergency Shell...
Warning: /dev/mapper/vg00-root does not exist
Warning: /dev/vg00/root does not exist
Warning: /dev/vg00/swap does not exist

Generating "/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt"

Entering emergency mode. Exit the shell to continue.
Type "journalctl" to view system logs.
You might want to save "/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt" to a USB stick or /boot
after mounting them and attach it to a bug report.

If I boot into rescue mode by selecting the option in the GRUB2 menu it boots fine and all is mounted auto magically, and it works just like if it had been a normal boot-up.

The VM is Centos7.5.1804, it works fine on many hosts in an ESXi environment, it has no GUI or anything, a very minimal OS.

Any help appreciated.

[tunk]

I have no experience moving VMs, so this is just a guess; maybe the virtual hardware isn't the same in VMWare and Virtualbox.

[TrevorH]

You need to boot the rescue kernel and run dracut --kver 3.10.0-862.14.4.el7.x8_64 (or whatever your real current kernel is). The initramfs contains hardware support and it's built at kernel install time specific to the hardware that you ran the install on.

[fishface]

I tried your suggested and no joy.

Seeing as it works fine when using the rescue kernel, is there a way I can copy the rescue kernel to be the kernel to use for a normal boot?

[tunk]

What's the output of: ls -l /boot/vm* /boot/initram*
And what dracut command did you use?

[TrevorH]

I tried your suggested and no joy.

What did you run exactly and what was the output from it?

[fishface]

I select the first option in the GRUB2 menu, the one it would normally boot from, and then added systemd.unit=rescue.target parameter to the linux16 line, then Ctrl+X then ran dracut --k 3.10.0-693.el7.x86_64, it ran for around 30secs, no output, and then the cursor re-appeared, no errors or anything, I then rebooted.


]https://photos.app.goo.gl/6rycom3uRPrXroEF8

[tunk]

Could you try to run dracut with/on the newest kernel?

[fishface]

I got the kernel version from the output of uname, which shows it as 3.10.0-693.el7.x86_64, but as you noticed, during boot GRUB2 shows several newer ones, I missed that detail.

[TrevorH]

Yes. The rescue kernel uname is different as it's created at install time. You need to know and use the latest kernel that's installed - rpm -q kernel will show all of them (oddly random order so make sure you pick the latest)