Create gnome-boxes VM from raw disk image

Software PureOS
1

I took a raw disk image from a VPS that I discontinued. Trying to figure out if there’s a way to boot that disk image via Gnome Boxes.

I can mount the disk image no problem using the Gnome Disks tool. To troubleshoot, I launched gnome-boxes in the terminal, selected “Create virtual machine from file”, and choose the disk image file. I get the following message in the terminal output

(gnome-boxes:46474): Boxes-WARNING **: 15:34:58.333: index-page.vala:181: Failed to create installer media for path '/home/seth/Downloads/rsdwpvps.img': Install media is not bootable

I’m guessing the raw disk image file either needs some doctoring, or Gnome’s definition of “Create virtual machine from file” is limited to files that contain operating system installation media.

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2

Resolved the issue by converting the raw disk image to qcow2 format via the following command

qemu-img convert -f raw -O qcow2 rawdisk.img converted.qcow2

Then I was able to create a new Gnome Boxes VM from the qcow2 file and boot it.

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