Ubuntu – How to install “qemu-img” and use it to convert a “qcow2” image to a Virtual Box one

convertqemusoftware installationvirtualbox

I have been asked to do some debugging work with gnome-continuous, but as this only comes in qcow2 format for qemu and I do not want to install qemu at this time so this may be slightly problematic, though I have read here that one may be able to use qemu-img to convert a qcow2 image to a Virtual Box compatible one. I have tried install qemu-img with:

sudo apt-get install qemu-img

But it appears as though there isn't a package under that name currently in the repositories, so how do I install it and use it to convert the image? I am running Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 with GNOME 3.18.

Best Answer

The package you want is qemu-utils:

% apt-file search qemu-img
qemu-utils: /usr/bin/qemu-img
qemu-utils: /usr/share/man/man1/qemu-img.1.gz

So install qemu-utils:

sudo apt-get install qemu-utils

To convert a QCOW2 image to a VirtualBox VDI image:

qemu-img convert -O vdi test.qcow2 test.vdi

Or to convert to a VMDK image:

qemu-img convert -O vmdk test.qcow2 test.vmdk

Or to convert to a VHD image:

qemu-img convert -O vpc test.qcow2 test.vhd
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