manually import VM's

[cybe...@national.shitposting.agency]

I will be reimaging a QubesOS machine. Will I be able to save the existing VM's manually and import into the fresh Install of Qubes?
I would like to do the backup operation without needing to actually boot up the existing OS, and then restore the backed up volumes after an install.

[awokd]

cybe...@national.shitposting.agency wrote on 9/25/18 7:05 PM:

> I will be reimaging a QubesOS machine. Will I be able to save the existing VM's manually and import into the fresh Install of Qubes?
> I would like to do the backup operation without needing to actually boot up the existing OS, and then restore the backed up volumes after an install.

No easy way I know of. Could mount the LVM qube partitions and backup
just the data you want to keep, but that wouldn't include the VM
definitions.

[awokd]

awokd wrote on 9/26/18 9:55 PM:

Anyone have a better approach? I have some large VMs on secondary
storage that have lost their qube configuration. I can recreate
definitions easily enough, but want to attach their root and private
volumes without a full, slow copy step.

[Chris Laprise]

Perhaps you could define the secondary storage as a Qubes storage pool,
then create empty vms in that pool. Finally, mv/lvrename/snapshot/ln
(your choice, depending on type of storage and preference) your existing
volumes as necessary.

--

Chris Laprise, tas...@posteo.net
https://github.com/tasket
https://twitter.com/ttaskett
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[awokd]

Chris Laprise wrote on 4/16/19 9:48 PM:

> Perhaps you could define the secondary storage as a Qubes storage pool,
> then create empty vms in that pool. Finally, mv/lvrename/snapshot/ln
> (your choice, depending on type of storage and preference) your existing
> volumes as necessary.

Thank you, lvrename did the trick. Probably would have helped if I had
specified it was set up as an LVM pool I added back in with qvm-pool.