Virtualizing CentOS 5 physical servers with LVM configuration

Somewhere on the internet was written:

Virtualizing a physical Linux server is a combination of knowledge, experience and luck.

Recently I had a the task for a client to virtualize a CentOS 5 Linux server. After searching on Google about it, I was disappointed to see so many posts of people having problems with it, especially those who had physical Linux servers with LVM configurations. If you research about a bit, you will be surprised on how many production CentOS 5 servers exist which run with their default installations with one large physical volume and one swap partition. The things are even worse if the boot partition is also on that same logical volume.

Unfortunately there are still many forgotten production Linux servers today which run CentOS 5. The things are even worse, because in smaller companies, those servers are set up and forgotten, and even those admins who once administered those servers are gone and not working for that company for years. What happens is when you try to virtualize Linux server with similar configuration described above with the VMware converter, the process usually terminates at 97% with error:

FAILED: An error occurred during the conversion:

'Partition number must be set for the boot volume'

Another common example is also found in this VMware KB article.

When you try to power on this crippled VM you'll end up with one of the two things.

1. The VM will behave as it is an empty VM (just created with no OS)
2. The system will try to boot, you will see the GRUB loading screen, and after a while when the kernel starts you will see a kernel panic message.

Both of this problems are completely solvable. Since you already have the main volume with everything inside (databases, software etc..) you just need to make sure that now you have to repair the  key parts from which every Linux operates boots and operates - the boot partition.