I have a Linux desktop I want to make a VM out of as a copy so I can take it on may MacBook pro laptop out of town. I know that I can make a VM from a Windows PC by just connecting the hard drive and importing it. How can I do that with Linux? Is there a way to just have it suck the HDD contents into a VM without going through the whole transfer agent?
There's no "official" supported way to transfer Linux PC into VM now. But you may try to copy contents of PC hard disk (or its part) into a binary file, create Linux VM on your Mac and add that binary file as a virtual disk image for the VM. It's possible that such virtual machine won't start up from the first time and some re-configuration and fix-ups will be required.
Could you give me details about what you mean by create a binary file image of the hard drive? I am not a linux expert.
It depends on configuration of your system. So better to google the details, its impossible to give precise instructions in a single forum post. Generally, from my point, it's better: a) to prepare external hard drive capable to contain the whole HDD image; b) boot the PC system from live CD; c) copy PC hard disk into external drive. For example, in the simplest case: # dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/external_disk/linux_pc.hdd - here /dev/sda is a name of your hard disk, and /media/external_disk is a mount point of external disk. Of course, things become harder if you have LVM, encrypted disk etc.
