Running existing qcow2 images

Hello and thanks for awesome tool!

I want to use Boxes not only for systems freshly installed, but also add some already working. Mainly to virtualize some old (or not) machines. Tried to make a qcow2 image out of the disk of a desktop PC (60 GB), and to use the file in create new VM menu. It recognize that it’s a virtual disk file, but fails with a troubleshooting log. Is there any process to add an existing image to Gnome-Boxes?

If there no way to do such a thing, maybe there is a way to create a VM for such image via virt-manager or virsh and to connect to it via Gnome-Boxes? It’s great to have everything in one place. I think I miss only ability to start VMs directly via Gnome activities search, or pin favorites to quick start bar.

Are you using GNOME Boxes 3.38? In it you should be able to select a .qcow2 file and create a new VM using it as a disk.

Great! I redone the process, got the error, and log. Then started to check if it’s safe to publish it, and…

2021-02-09T22:46:59.570272Z qemu-system-x86_64: -blockdev {"node-name":"libvirt-2-format","read-only":false,"cache":{"direct":false,"no-flush":false},"driver":"qcow2","file":"libvirt-2-storage","backing":null}: Could not reopen file: Permission denied

Copying of permissions from native images helped to get “Booting from Hard Disk…” message. So now I can give it an installer ISO-file and choose to boot from it. And then mount the image, and then mount the partition from the drive image in question.

What do I need to make an image bootable? sudo grub-install wasn’t successful. Is it right direction? Please, advice.

I’m running 3.38 and don’t see anywhere to select a QCOW image. Would you please describe where it is found.

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