Where to find libguestfs-winsupport for RHEL 6.5 Client?

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Since I have many problems with VMware Workstation 9 running on a RHEL6 Client I consider not upgrading to VMware Workstation 10 but switching to KVM instead. Installing all the KVM stuff went fine and I was able to convert my Linux-based VMs successfully.

BUT: Where do I find the package libguestfs-winsupport which seems to be a prerequisite for converting and running Windows guests? The V2V Guide says: "The libguestfs-winsupport package is provided by the RHEL V2VWIN (v. 6 for 64-bit x86_64) channel" But since I only own a Client subscription I do not have access to this channel.

So why is virtio-win available for me as Client subscriber but no libguestfs-winsupport? This seems inconsistent to me, and furthermore it prevents me from running Windows guests on RHEL Client. Is this really intended?

AS
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RJ Red Hat Active Contributor 337 points
25 November 2013 7:01 PM

I believe it's not intentional. Does the following link work?

https://rhn.redhat.com/rhn/software/packages/details/Overview.do?pid=631818

(I'm subscribed to the V2V channel so I can't test if this needs a special subscription).

AS Newbie 15 points
1 December 2013 4:29 PM

No, a search on this page only gives me "No packages." nevertheless I choose "Channels relevant to your systems" or "In the following architectures: x86_64".

However my need for libguestfs-winsupport was just a misunderstanding: By reading the V2V Guide I thought I would need virt-v2v to convert my (local) virtual machines from VMware Workstation to KVM but in fact using qemu-img for that purpose was totally sufficient. In the meantime I have converted all my VMs (Windows and Linux ones) to KVM/Spice successfully and am impressed by the stability and performance of KVM.

But I must confess that I'm curious for what exactly libguestfs-winsupport is actually needed. For converting Windows VMs on external hypervisors (like ESX), this is what I've learned so far but is not relevant to me. The package description tells me "The libguestfs-winsupport package adds support for Windows guests to libguestfs, a set of tools and libraries allowing users to access and modify virtual machine (VM) disk images." which is a rather abstract description without mentioning specific use. So far I do not miss this package but will I probably miss it in future? (Hopefully a Web research will answer that question but unfortunately I did not found the time to do such research so far.)

RJ Red Hat Active Contributor 337 points
1 December 2013 8:02 PM

If you use virt-v2v to convert the guest, virt-v2v will do more than just format conversion. It will remove VMware drivers and install virtio drivers and make other adjustments. To do this, virt-v2v uses libguestfs. In order to access Windows guests, this needs libguestfs-winsupport (but only on RHEL; in Fedora Windows support is built into libguestfs).

AS Newbie 15 points
1 December 2013 8:53 PM

Thanks for the clarification.

Removing VMware Tools and installing virtio drivers is something I can do manually, too, and already have done manually successfully, so I don't see a problem here although it seems it would be nice to have access to libguestfs-winsupport as a RHEL Desktop subscriber (with self-support) since it would make life easier when converting Windows VMs. Are there any plans to make it available to Desktop subscribers, too?

And what are the other adjustments virt-v2v does? I just took a look at the V2V Guide (again) but didn't find details about that point.

FA Newbie 5 points
25 March 2014 3:59 PM

Hello,

We noticed this package is available through rhel-x86_64-server-v2vwin-6 channel only with "RHN Classic".

When trying to migrate from "RHN Classic" to "RHSM", we got an error with rhel-x86_64-server-v2vwin-6 channel.
As a result, we stayed with RHN Classic :

~ LANG=C rhn-migrate-classic-to-rhsm
Red Hat account: xxxxxxxx
Password:

Retrieving existing RHN Classic subscription information...

+-----------------------------------------------------+
System is currently subscribed to these RHN Classic Channels:
+-----------------------------------------------------+
rhel-x86_64-server-6
rhel-x86_64-server-supplementary-6
rhel-x86_64-server-v2vwin-6
rhel-x86_64-server-optional-6

+-----------------------------------------------------+
No product certificates are mapped to these RHN Classic channels:
+-----------------------------------------------------+
rhel-x86_64-server-v2vwin-6

Use --force to ignore these channels and continue the migration.

Richard, can you please check why rhel-x86_64-server-v2vwin-6 is only available within RHN Classic, and is not having the right "product certificate" in RHSM ?

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