[[!tag note-to-self linux]]

I wanted to set up a virtual machine running Ubuntu jaunty (which is undergoing heavy development right now). In order to avoid having to install one from scratch, I copied an existing virtual machine running intrepid, and upgrading that.

Upgrading from release to release (even to one under development) is, of course, one of the things Debian and Ubuntu do very well. The hitch here was that was I wanted to keep the original virtual machine, since I also want to have somewhere to test things on intrepid.

In the end I did this:

• virt-clone --connect=qemu:///system -o achmed -n brutha -f VM/brutha.img
• Change the hostname of the new machine.

I wrote down the steps to rename the host as a checklist. If I find the list if incomplete, I'll to it. (It's a wiki page, so if you find something to add, please do.)

(Obviously, those steps probably apply to most Unix based operating systems, but I only have Linux to test them on. Perhaps I should set up a few virtual machines with various BSD flavors, some day.)