"A line such as ide1:0.fileName = "/dev/cdrom" or a line such as ide1:0.fileName = "/dev/scd0" wil cause the ovftool to abort with the following message:

- Device 'cdrom1' has a backing type that is not supported. This is a general limitation of the virtual machine's virtual hardware version of the selected host.

By contrast if the vmx file cdrom setting is set to ide0:1.autodetect = "TRUE"  this error is not received.

We are not sure if this can be overcome with other tool options, although we have not seen anything that looks promising.

Additionally, many of our settings are not carried over to the ovf format, they are simply dropped, such as the isolation.* settings.

Also, the original VM consisted of several disk files (vmdk).  The ovftool created one vmdk file from this VM.  We will require creating vmware persistent and vmware non-persistent disks for some of our VMs.

We are concerned that the ovftool may lose such disk information. This would be a show stopper for us, and would require us find an alternative solution for transporting VMs.

We would like for VMware to advise us of possible workarounds and any recommendations for these issues."

This is driving me crazy! How do you specify which datastore to use when there are multiple?

I ran exactly the same command on a box that had one datastore and it worked fine (as expected). It created the VM folder in the root of the DS and then pulled across the VM from the OVF. However with multiple it just says no target datstore specified. I've tried a million combinations of ?-ds= with square brackets, without. Sometimes it says not found in inventory. I guess it's looking for a folder. But surely this can't be that hard?

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool P:\Downloads\PanoManagerVM-2.8.0

-ovf\panomanager.ovf "vi://root@192.168.1.5

Opening OVF source: P:\Downloads\PanoManagerVM-2.8.0-ovf\panomanager.ovf

Warning: No manifest file

Please enter login information for target vi://192.168.1.5/

Username: root

Password: *********

Opening VI target: vi://root@192.168.1.5/

Error: No target datastore specified

Datastores found on target:

  SAN Storage

  storage1

Hello,

I am using vSphere ESX (4 or 5).

I am writing automatic scripts using esxcfg and ovftool (on windows) commands.

I have some questions:

1. How can i create Resource Pool's? (if it cannot be done using ovftool, is there another way? maybe using esxcfg?)

2. What is the exact syntax of ovftool to deploy under that Resource Pool?

I am looking for something like this:

ovftool --noImageFiles -ds=dsName --net:"Network1"="Network2" --name=MyVM "C:/MyVM.ovf" "vi://user:password@192.168.1.1/Resource/myResource"

or anything else that can help.

Thanks!

erelh

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to get "ovftool" to modify the resulting ovf (starting from a vmx) with a few parameters like:

• --net:'nat=VM Network'
• --memorySize:vm1=2048
• etc.

but none of them is working. The resulting ovf is every time exactly the same. Here below the probe of the ova file:

As I said the resulting ovf is always the same. I've tried with different examples from the official "ovftool" doc but nothing seems to work. I've even tried to look in the logs but no errors are displayed and no information about my argument / properties are printed.

Could someone please let me know if I'm doing something wrong or is "ovftool" not made for that?

Best regards,

Vincenzo

I have an OVF I'm trying to import into VI (ESX 3.5) and I'm getting the following error:

Error: OVF Package is not supported by target:
- Line 57: No space left for device '7' on parent controller '6'.

Here's the snippet of OVF:

      <Item>
        <rasd:Address>0</rasd:Address>
        <rasd:ElementName>IDE 0</rasd:ElementName>
        <rasd:InstanceID>6</rasd:InstanceID>
        <rasd:ResourceSubType>piix4</rasd:ResourceSubType>
        <rasd:ResourceType>5</rasd:ResourceType>
      </Item>
      <Item>
        <rasd:AddressOnParent>0</rasd:AddressOnParent>
        <rasd:ElementName>Harddisk disk1</rasd:ElementName>
        <rasd:HostResource>ovf:/disk/disk1</rasd:HostResource>
        <rasd:InstanceID>7</rasd:InstanceID>
        <rasd:Parent>6</rasd:Parent>
        <rasd:ResourceType>17</rasd:ResourceType>
      </Item>
      <Item>
        <rasd:Address>1</rasd:Address>
        <rasd:ElementName>IDE 1</rasd:ElementName>
        <rasd:InstanceID>8</rasd:InstanceID>
        <rasd:ResourceSubType>piix4</rasd:ResourceSubType>
        <rasd:ResourceType>5</rasd:ResourceType>
      </Item>

Thanks!

Mike

I have created my own OVF discriptor XML file for creating Logical Partations on systems and installing OS on the created Virtual machines.But I m facing problem in specifying the Disk Section attributes such as OVF:diskid, OVF:href and other details in my OVF xml file.I mean I m unable to find any clue regarding specifying the raw OS information in OVF file ,so that while deploying the OVF into managed systems ,it automatically picks up the os image from the NIM repository.

Thanks in advance .....

Hi i've an OVF virtual appliance with hardware version 4 how can i upgrade it to hardware version 7 and convert to OVA as well? it seems ovftools does not have the ability to upgrade to a higher hardware version.

Any suggestions how i can perform such a task?

Thanks for any info

I am trying to install ovftool 4.1.0 on a Ubuntu guest I have on my Windows host.  I downloadedd the ovftool bundle changed permission to +x, started the bundle, and accepted the license.  It says it is ready to install and I press enter.  Then I get the below and ovftool is never installed.


 


Rolling back VMware installer component 2.1.0


Removing files..


Uninstalling VMware installer component 2.1.0


Deconfiguring...


 


Any ideas? The bundle I have is the 'VMware-ovftool-4.1.0-2459827-lin.x86_64.bundle' on Ubuntu 14


 

Hello,

I created a virtual machine in virtualbox which I then exported to OVA format using the export.

In VMWare player I then opened the OVA file. The VM opened, I was able to start the virtual machine and test it. All is working correctly.

I now wanted to export the VMWare virtual machine to a OVF format using the ovftool.

I run the ovftool providing the source and target, the ovftool is throwing a "Failed to open file" error no matter which source I provide. It is very frustrating since even in the verbose log there is no indication about which file the program is failing to find.

The verbose log is not very long so I will post it below.

What am I missing??

======= Verbose log

2018-12-27T23:27:15.862-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] [SSL_DB] Using C:\Users\Gordynorth\AppData\Roaming\VMware\ovftool_SSLDB as SSL DB

2018-12-27T23:27:15.887-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Subscribing to signal: 2 (SIGINT)

2018-12-27T23:27:15.887-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Subscribing to signal: 4 (SIGILL)

2018-12-27T23:27:15.887-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Subscribing to signal: 22 (SIGABRT)

2018-12-27T23:27:15.887-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Subscribing to signal: 8 (SIGFPE)

2018-12-27T23:27:15.887-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Subscribing to signal: 15 (SIGTERM)

2018-12-27T23:27:15.887-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Initializing progress

2018-12-27T23:27:15.887-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] OvfTool Version: VMware ovftool 4.3.0 (build-10104578)

2018-12-27T23:27:15.888-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Using home directory: C:\Users\Gordynorth\AppData\Roaming\VMware\ovftool.cfg

2018-12-27T23:27:15.894-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Curl Version: 7.59.0

2018-12-27T23:27:15.894-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Done initializing libs

2018-12-27T23:27:15.894-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Determining source

2018-12-27T23:27:15.895-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Determining target

2018-12-27T23:27:15.895-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Getting source

2018-12-27T23:27:15.896-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Opening source

2018-12-27T23:27:15.896-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] [Context::Context] started. No parameters.

2018-12-27T23:27:15.896-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] [VmxConsumerContext::VmxConsumerContext] started.

2018-12-27T23:27:15.897-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] .\ is not a file

2018-12-27T23:27:15.903-05:00 verbose OVFTool[15156] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Backtrace:

--> [backtrace begin] product: VMware Workstation, version: e.x.p, build: build-10104578, tag: OVFTool, cpu: x86_64, os: windows, buildType: release

--> backtrace[00] vmacore.dll[0x001F6D2A]

--> backtrace[01] vmacore.dll[0x00064FD0]

--> backtrace[02] vmacore.dll[0x0006776E]

--> backtrace[03] vmacore.dll[0x0002533C]

--> backtrace[04] ovftool.exe[0x00013FB6]

--> backtrace[05] ovftool.exe[0x0003AF07]

--> backtrace[06] ovftool.exe[0x0023B3CF]

--> backtrace[07] ovftool.exe[0x0023F77B]

--> backtrace[08] ovftool.exe[0x0023EA12]

--> backtrace[09] ovftool.exe[0x00247641]

--> backtrace[10] ovftool.exe[0x000D16E7]

--> backtrace[11] ovftool.exe[0x00159CBF]

--> backtrace[12] ovftool.exe[0x000DAC7C]

--> backtrace[13] ovftool.exe[0x000DB954]

--> backtrace[14] ovftool.exe[0x003846C5]

--> backtrace[15] KERNEL32.DLL[0x00017E94]

--> backtrace[16] ntdll.dll[0x0006A251]

--> [backtrace end]

Using a seperate process (python-vm-builder), I am building an ESX/ESXi compliant image that I have confirmed can be uploaded, imported and started in Workstation, ESX 3.0, ESXi 3.5 and even Server 2.0+.

I'm trying to go into the next step now, and convert this ESXi Image into a single OVF archive for even easier deployments.

Using the latest OVF Tool I have successfully created the new .ovf and zipped it up inside a tar.gz'd.  On my Windows box, I then extract it (using WinRAR), then using 'Import' in VIC try to import it.  When I select the OVF and click next it then throws the below error:

An error occurred while parsing the OVF descriptor

Unable to parse XML element 'Envelope'

What am I doing wrong? 

I have attached both the original VMX and the new OVF.

Please help!

Thank you.

Greetings!

I'm currently trying to sign created OVA package with trusted certificate from Thawte.

This cert is valid (till 2013) and could be easily verified with openssl (`openssl verify sign.cert`) or with Windows tools.

Signing works as follows and it is okay:

ovftool --sourceType=vmx --targetType=ova --privateKey=sign.pem package.vmx package.ova

But when I try to check it with ovftool (`ovftool package.ova`) it shows:

Error: Verification of package.cert failed

Also verification of package.cert itself with openssl is also fine.

Can anybody help me on what could cause such problem?

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

When i try to configure deployment job from Jenkins, i am getting

error in command line, Not sure how to find solution, i was able to use the same command from my local system directly from my user account.

This error i am getting after message

Opening OVF source: myfile.ovf

thanks in advance,

vduggirala

Is there a document anywhere that outlines the format that the OVFTool expects the OVF file to be in?

Such as: elements that ovfTool expects?

I have some OVF sources that are .9 and 1.0 compliant however, ovfTool does not 'like' them because the OVF is not written the exact same way as an ovfTool produced OVF of the same VM.  The VMware vmx setting, the resources subtypes are not there for example.  As these are VMware specific and optional.

Any guidance is greatly helpful.

Thanks!

Hi All,

    I have just exported an vApp using ovf from my vCenter v4u2. When I try to import into Vmware Workstation 7.1(running on Window 7 Ent 64bit) I get the following error message "The OVF descriptor file could not be parsed."  I have attached the log.

Cheers!

Hi,

I have built a VM, using VMware Studio in OVA format. I defined some custom OVF environment properties in it.

After I built the VM, I opened the .OVF file to see the property values are appeared correctly. They look like the below

</ProductSection>

I deployed this OVF to a ESXi 4.0 server. Later exported the same VM to OVF format using OVFTool, using the command line

ovftool.exe vi://root:xxxxxxxxxxx@IP/vmname  "d:\Virtual Machines\imported-OVF\newVM.ovf"

After the export, I opened the newVM.OVF file and found that the properties (like product, vendor, version etc.) are not retained.

What could be the issue. Please suggest.

--Hemanth

OVFTool keeps failing when I try to convert an OVA image to vmdk, since I don't have a domain on our network, a la vi://hostname.domain.

What should I do?

It's a Mitel Linux Image.

Hi,

Using ESXi 6.0.0, ovftool 4.2

I am trying to export a VM in a standalone ESXi to OVF using the following sintaxys:

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool "vi://root:pass@esxiip/ha-datacenter?ds=\[SSD Datastore\] nubodb_gima/nubodb.vmx" c:\nubodb-ovf\

But it is showing: Error: Locator does not refer to an object: vi://root@esxiip/ha-datacenter?ds=\[SSD%20Datastore\]%20nubodb_gima/nubodb.vmx

VM is located in:  [SSD Datastore] nubodb_gima/nubodb.vmx

I looked at the documentation and also the examples provided by ovftool but it is not working. I'll apreciate any help.

Gracias,

Hopefully this is the right place to ask this.

We have a product that's distributed as an OVA and have done so for years. We're finally getting around to supporting vSphere 6.5 but are running into an issue. If we deploy the OVA directly to a 6.5 host, the import works fine. However if we deploy via vCenter, it fails with the following error:

Failed to deploy OVF package.

Cause:

A general system error occurred:

An error occurred: Could not convert field 'spec' of structure 'com.vmware.vcenter.vdcs.floppy_model'

This only happens on vSphere 6.5. It works fine with vSphere 6.0 and earlier. When we create the template, we do have a floppy device (it's needed as we do our OS install during the build process) so I changed it so right before it creates the OVA using ovftool 4.1, I edit the vmx (while the vm is powered off) and remove all references to the floppy device. However the corresponding ovf file still has references to the floppy.

Any ideas what's going on and how to fix? I'm not sure why all of a sudden it stopped working in 6.5. From our end, the build process hasn't changes in years. I can attach the vmx and ovf files if that helps. Thanks!

Hi,

I am trying to upload ovf file to vcloud. But I am getting following error:

D:\apps\ovftool>ovftool --acceptAllEulas --diskMode=thin --noSSLVerify

--overwrite --X:connectionReconnectCount=3 --X:forceDnsName --X:disableHostname

Resolve --X:logFile=upload.log --X:logLevel=trivia "D:\VM\VM.ovf" "vcloud://admin:admin123@XYZ.com?org=ORG&vappTemplate

=Test&catalog=CAT"

Opening VMX source: D:\VM\VM.ovf

Opening vCloud target: vcloud://admin@XYZ.com:443/

Deploying to vCloud vApp template: vcloud://admin@XYZ.com:443/

Transfer Failed

Error: Failed to send http data

Completed with errors

In log file I can see following log:

-->

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: SSL: certificate subject name 'XYZ.com' does not match target host name 'XYZ1.com'

-->

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: header data hidden

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: header data hidden

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: => Sending data of size 5

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: header data hidden

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: header data hidden

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: header data hidden

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: header data hidden

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: header data hidden

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 trivia -[04660] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] CURL: Connection #34 to host XYZ1.com left intact

-->

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 verbose -[04044] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] vCloud response code: 204

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 verbose -[04044] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] vCloud response body:

-->

2016-01-22T15:40:23.269+05:30 verbose -[04044] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Curl session torn down

Any help is appreciated.

Using a seperate process (python-vm-builder), I am building an ESX/ESXi compliant image that I have confirmed can be uploaded, imported and started in Workstation, ESX 3.0, ESXi 3.5 and even Server 2.0+.

I'm trying to go into the next step now, and convert this ESXi Image into a single OVF archive for even easier deployments.

Using the latest OVF Tool I have successfully created the new .ovf and zipped it up inside a tar.gz'd.  On my Windows box, I then extract it (using WinRAR), then using 'Import' in VIC try to import it.  When I select the OVF and click next it then throws the below error:

An error occurred while parsing the OVF descriptor

Unable to parse XML element 'Envelope'

What am I doing wrong? 

I have attached both the original VMX and the new OVF.

Please help!

Thank you.