Migrating between several Linux distributions

Lets say you're migrating between two totally different Linux distributions. You've copied all of the settings and other stuff. And then you realise that you forgot to migrate databases from PostgreSQL or MySQL. And of course you don't want to reboot every time you want anything from the old system.

QEMU can help you here. What you need - is to create a new VM which will use real partitions.

In my case I've used /dev/sda as device with MBR, /dev/sda2 as /, /dev/sda3 as swap, /dev/sda5 as /home.



Just launch it.



Now you're able to boot your previous Linux installation without any need to reboot. It's really flexible.