Convert Image to CRAFF

Now that we have set up our Windows image, we need to convert the image to the CRAFF format that Simics uses.

First, shut down the guest machine with:

shutdown /s /f /t 0

Find The Virtual Disk Image

After the guest machine has shut down, click the "Storage" category header in the machine page shown below.

Storage category header

The settings window for Storage will appear. Note the "Location" field. This is the path to the virtual disk image.

Location field showing virtual disk image path

To convert the VDI to raw, we can use either the VirtualBox CLI:

VBoxManage clonehd "/path/to/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 11/Windows 11.vdi" "examples/tutorials/windows-kernel/windows-11.img" --format raw

Or we can use the qemu-img tool (included with QEMU installations):

qemu-img convert -f vdi -O vdi "/path/to/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 11/Windows 11.vdi" "examples/tutorials/windows-kernel/windows-11.img"

Then, we will use the craff utility included with Simics. Find your Simics base directory (e.g. simics-6.0.185), and run:

~/simics/simics-6.0.185/bin/craff -o examples/tutorials/windows-kernel/windows-11.craff examples/tutorials/windows-kernel/windows-11.img