[ale] Convert VDI to raw image (was ALE puzzler (or, BusyBox rocks))

[JK]

Omar Chanouha wrote:
> All,
> 
> I have been trying to convert a vdi to a raw image so I can run it
> under KVM rather then virtualbox. All the posts on how to do this
> revolve around a program called vditool which no longer exists. There
> was also a suggestion to use a patched version of qemu, but that is
> also old. So my plan is to run the vdi in virtualbox, then dd the disk
> over to my actual machine. I tried:
> 
> dd if=/dev/hda | ssh otech at 192.168.1.100 'cat > disk.img'
> 
> That seemed to start fine, but after about a gig the transmission
> keeps breaking. Both the client and server claim the other closed the
> connection.
> 
> So then I tried the suggestion from this thread:
> 
> server: sudo nc -l -p 22 > disk.img
> virtualbox: sudo dd if=/dev/hda | nc 192.168.1.100 22


First thing I'd try is using a non-privileged port (above 1024).

You might try filtering the dd output through base64 to make sure
it's all ASCII... I thought it was safe to pass arbitrary binary
data across an nc connection, but maybe I'm mistaken about that.

If you have room on the host machine, you can use a VirtualBox
shared folder to just dd the disk directly to a file on the host,
without involving the network at all.

-- JK

-- 
I do not particularly want to go where the money is -
  it usually does not smell nice there. -- A. Stepanov