virtualbox.org

This is my first attempted use of virtualbox so hopefully it will be easy to point me in the right direction

On a windows 7 32 bit host I have just installed 5.2.44 (chose this as not sure about whether the guest, sco openserver 5.0.4, is 32 or 64)

steps so far
put the sco openserver scsi disk on a ubuntu linux server and used dd (using conv=sync,noerror) to dump the disk to my windows PC, it came out the right sort of size so assuming it is good
i tried using vboxmanage to convert the dd file to a virtual using convertdd (also tried convertfromraw) and got "Failed to write to disk image " VERR_INVALID_PARAMETER
i tried vbboxmanage showhdinfo sco.dd and it said "Could not get the storage format of the medium" VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED

Help please

It appears that you are trying to virtualize an existing computer's hard drive.

The error message says Virtualbox cannot interpret dd images.

We should see the exact commands you used.

vboxmanage showhdinfo sco.dd

it said "Could not get the storage format of the medium" VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED

Surely that's not the command you used to make the .dd file? Nor the command used to attempt to convert it to a Virtualbox disk file?

Mike234 wrote:put the sco openserver scsi disk on a ubuntu linux server and used dd (using conv=sync,noerror) to dump the disk to my windows PC, it came out the right sort of size so assuming it is good
i tried using vboxmanage to convert the dd file to a virtual using convertdd (also tried convertfromraw)

apologies, vbox newbie didn't appreciate that might be the issue

I used dd in a sudo ftp command to pump the image to a windows PC

binary ' the ftp command to set the transfer type
put "|dd if=/dev/sdb bs=10240 conv=sync,noerror" sco.dd

I have also tried without the bs=10240 and got the same error message from vbox manage

By way of a test i have also added another hard drive to the machine and run a direct dd
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdg conv,noerror

and I then reduced the machine to just the new test disk and booted it successfully so dd does make a good image copy

the full message for vboxmanage showhdinfo is
error: could not get the storage format of the medium 'C:\Temp\sco.dd <VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED>
error: Details: code VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR <0x80bb0005>, component MediumWrap, interface iMedium, callee iUnknown
error: Context: "openMedium(Bstr(pszFilenameOrUuid).raw(), enmDevType, enmAccessMode, fForceNewUuidOpen, pMedium.asOutParam())" at line 179 of file VBoxManage.cpp

the convert command that fails is

vboxmanage convertdd sco.dd sco.vhd --format VHD

I also tried convertfromraw

Thanks for the commands. Virtualbox was not programmed to use .dd images except apparently in 'convertfromraw' or 'convertdd'.

'showmediuminfo' only works on recognized drive file types like VHD or VDI, not dd images, so it gives 'not supported' errors.

Mike234 wrote:I used dd in a sudo ftp command to pump the image to a windows PC

Mike234 wrote:By way of a test i have also added another hard drive to the machine and run a direct dd
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdg conv,noerror

Never having done a dd, I don't know if there are special requirements to get the image to boot in Virtualbox, or if straight dd works but dd over ftp does not. But here is an idea:

Use the Windows host's Disk Management to make and mount a fixed-size(*) VHD, then ftp/dd the original drive into the mounted VHD. Virtualbox can then use the VHD directly.

Also try dd'ing the original to a dd image on a second disk in the PC, then move that second disk to the Windows host and dd the image onto the mounted VHD. (this process avoids ftp, which could be introducing trouble)

( * VHD has a design flaw that can kill the VHD's data in a dynamically expanding VHD. Fixed-size VHDs don't expand, so the design flaw never gets triggered.)

Made some progress

the vboxmanage command was failing because I was using VHD as the format when I changed to using VDI it worked ok

I was then able to create my first virtualbox machine and it all worked apart from the network. I talked to someone I know who is already using sco 5.0.4 on vbox and mirrored his settings but the network didn't work

At least I can confirm that dd over ftp does work as that was the image I used on vbox

I then tried to command line convert the VDI to a VHD so I could try it on a Hyper-V machine and the conversion failed at 90%

I then tried to do the conversion from within the vbox admin program and it failed at the same 90%

I tried upgrading Vbox as the other working system is on 6.1.16 but the 32bit host wouldn't install it

I am currently making another system up to run 6.1.16 to see if the network works in that

Glad you got something working! Strange that any attempt to go to VHD fails...

On the network, check that the are being used by the VM has drivers available for the VM's OS. Don't worry about 10/1000/10000 mbps, the network card in the VM is supposed o accept data as fast as the host network adapter can feed it. So an older VM network card should still perform well, if you have drivers.