All,

First of all, apologies if this is an inappropriate forum. I do not have a support contact for this issue. We are VMware customers, however our licenses are purchased through an academic reseller. Our concern is that this bug has crept into recent releases and perhaps gone unnoticed in QA. It's serious enough for us to consider moving to other hypervisor products.

I believe there may be a serious bug in OVFtool's disk read code. We observe that VMs are created OK after upload or import, but disk contents are zero-filled. No error conditions are reported at any time. It is only clear that the bug has been exercised, when an uploaded or imported VM fails to boot.

We have several research VMs with multiple LANs, which run FreeBSD 8.2 in VMware Fusion 5.0.2, MacOS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion. I was also able to reproduce the bug with a fresh installation of vSphere ESXi 5.1 and ovftool 3.0.1. V

Using the separately packaged ovftool, I can export the VMs inside Fusion, by giving fully qualified paths to their VMX files. The bug appears to be in VMDK read. I exercised it in two use cases, Fusion OVA import and ESXi OVA upload, as follows:

1. If I import an affected OVA into Fusion from the GUI, Fusion will invoke its own copy of ovftool 3.0.1 to perform the import. VMs are created with a sane VMX file. VMDKs are created. However their contents are zero-filled, and the VMDK contents in the OVA have been ignored.
2. If I upload an affected OVA to ESXi, using ovftool and a vi:// target URL on the command line, the same bug is observed with ESXi. Again, the VMX is sane - we inspected this by SSHing into ESXi and manually reviewing the VMX on the VMFS data store with vi. The VMDK contents are zeroed on the VMFS datastore, and the VMDK contents in the OVA have been ignored.

ovftool seems, in some cases, to ignore the contents of the packaged VMDK files in OVAs, and those associated with VMX files from VMware products.

To date I have only been able to reproduce the issue with FreeBSD guests. The bug does not appear in all exported OVAs, however affected VM and OVA combinations will consistently demonstrate it.

• We first noticed this problem in October 2012, and have not been in a position to exercise it thoroughly until now.

• I can make an OVA available which demonstrates the issue. Please contact me privately to arrange. The files are typically 2GB in size.

Other observations:

• There is no problem with OVA generation. I have inspected the OVAs manually using tar, extracted the embedded VMDKs inside, converted them back to 2GB sparse format using vmware-vdiskmanager (or vmkfstools under ESXi), and loaded them into ESXi and Fusion respectively.

• Since ovftool was introduced, VMDKs must be uploaded manually using SFTP to avoid triggering the bug. The functionality in the vmware-vdiskmanager command which allows direct upload to ESXi servers has been removed.

• Casual inspection with DTrace under OS X reveals that ovftool seems to be reading the full OVA file contents. We initially thought there may been a problem with VMDK upload, however other guests have not been affected.

• The serialized format VMDK contents in the OVA are consistent with the original VMDKs. We verified this in one case with MD5 checksums. This requires denying all writes during the test.
• We also reproduced this bug with out-of-box, unmodified FreeBSD installations, as our research VMs use ZFS in GPT partition containers.

• We also noticed that Fusion's private copy of ovftool will break if ESXi specific options are specified in $HOME/.ovftool - although this is a separate issue from the main bug.
• No source code is supplied for ovftool, so users are not able to fix this issue themselves.

Workarounds:

• We load the OVA into Oracle VirtualBox, and re-export the OVA from there.
• This is undesirable for many reasons, the main one being that it loses all the network binding information, which is critical to our work.

thanks,

Bruce

Hi Guys,

I'm getting the below error when using the OVFtool to convert an OVA file to VMX.

Error:

- Line 38: Unsupported value '16' for element 'VirtualQuantity'.

- Virtual machine has 16 virtual CPUs, but the host only supports 8. The number of virtual CPUs may be limited by the guest OS selected for the virtual machine or by the licensing for the host.

I am trying to solve it using the syntax option --viCpuResource=<shares>:<reservation>:<limit>

However I don't know what to denote in the placeholder <shares>

I have also read the OVFtool user guide, but it does not give any info on the viCpuResource option.

Can anyone give me some guidance here?

Hi all ...I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this question and I'm hoping someone could plase advise me as to how to do this.

I created a nested ESXi 5.5b VM.The VM is not connected to a vCenter as yet and it may or may not be connected based on whether or not I want to join it to a vCenter or not.

I then set the vAPP options to enable for the VM settings.

I then set various advanced properties for the VM.

I now have a Python script (I named it test2.py) which collects the properties from an OVA during it's deployment , the script then uses the info collected from the properties and applies them in commands at the cli.

I use this info to alter things like the Hostname, DNS, IP and other info inside the VM.

This all works successfully.

I would like to have the script start/run-once at boot time after the vAPP is deployed.

How do I do this ? and where to I place the script ? so that is does not get deleted or destroyed when the ova gets created and then deployed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

Den

Hi , there !

i got problem when i deploy a .ova file , when the process of deploying is around 98 99 % an error comes say u can't go any farther !!!

this is a complete log of what it says !!!

******************************************************************

C:\Documents and Settings\SOLMATE\Desktop>"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool\ovftool.exe" --X:logToConsole "K:\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram).ova" k:\'

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool\ovftool.exe"' is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file.

C:\Documents and Settings\SOLMATE\Desktop>"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool\ovftool.exe" --X:logToConsole "K:\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200
G -8G(Ram).ova" k:\
2011-09-28T11:38:38.318+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 2 (SIGINT)
2011-09-28T11:38:38.318+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 4 (SIGILL)
2011-09-28T11:38:38.318+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 22 (SIGABRT)
2011-09-28T11:38:38.318+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 8 (SIGFPE)
2011-09-28T11:38:38.318+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Subscribing to signal: 15 (SIGTERM)
2011-09-28T11:38:38.318+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] [ovfTool.cpp] Using home directory C:\Documents and Settings\SOLMATE\Application Data\VMware\ovftool.cfg
2011-09-28T11:38:38.318+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] [ovfTool.cpp] OvfTool Environment:
--> /X:httpTimeout = "600"
--> /X:imageReadSize = "262144"
--> /X:logToConsole = "true"
--> /X:maxNumberOfTermSignals = "5"
--> /X:maxRedirects = "256"
--> /X:maximalDeltaConfSize = "8"
--> /X:maximalDeltaTreeSize = "6"
--> /X:progressSmoothing = "60"
--> /X:useMacNaming = "false"
--> /X:vCloudKeepTemplate = "true"
--> /X:vCloudTimeout = "3600"
--> /X:vimSessionTimeout = "600"
--> /authdPortSource = "902"
--> /authdPortTarget = "902"
--> /fencedMode = "bridged"
--> /prgPath = "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool"
--> /source = "K:\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram).ova"
--> /target = "k:\"
-->
2011-09-28T11:38:38.396+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] [ovfTool.cpp] Done initializing libs
2011-09-28T11:38:38.396+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] [ovfTool.cpp] Determining source
2011-09-28T11:38:38.396+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] [ovfTool.cpp] Determining target
Opening OVA source: K:\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram).ova

2011-09-28T11:38:38.490+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] OVF Descriptor: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
--> <!--Generated by VMware VirtualCenter Server, User: Administrator, UTC time: 2011-07-30T02:20:18.871093Z-->
--> <Envelope vmw:buildId="build-345043" xmlns="http://schemas.dmtf.org/ovf/envelope/1" xmlns:cim="http://schemas.dmtf.org/wbem/wscim/1/common" xmlns:ovf="http:
//schemas.dmtf.org/ovf/envelope/1" xmlns:rasd="http://schemas.dmtf.org/wbem/wscim/1/cim-schema/2/CIM_ResourceAllocationSettingData" xmlns:vmw="http://www.vmware.com/schema/ovf" xmlns:vssd="http://schemas.dmtf.org/wbem/wscim/1/cim-schema/2/CIM_VirtualSystemSettingData" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
-->   <References>
-->     <File ovf:href="Win_2008_X64_-Sharepoint_2_-_IP_65.122__200G_-8G(Ram)-disk1.vmdk" ovf:id="file1" ovf:size="30856148480" />
-->     <File ovf:href="Win_2008_X64_-Sharepoint_2_-_IP_65.122__200G_-8G(Ram)-file1.iso" ovf:id="file2" ovf:size="3735289856" />
-->   </References>
-->   <DiskSection>
-->     <Info>Virtual disk information</Info>
-->     <Disk ovf:capacity="200" ovf:capacityAllocationUnits="byte * 2^30" ovf:diskId="vmdisk1" ovf:fileRef="file1" ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces
/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized" ovf:populatedSize="45460160512" />
-->   </DiskSection>
-->   <NetworkSection>
-->     <Info>The list of logical networks</Info>
-->     <Network ovf:name="LAN">
-->       <Description>The LAN network</Description>
-->     </Network>
-->   </NetworkSection>
-->   <VirtualSystem ovf:id="Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP:65.122  200G -8G(Ram)">
-->     <Info>A virtual machine</Info>
-->     <Name>Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP:65.122  200G -8G(Ram)</Name>
-->     <OperatingSystemSection ovf:id="1" vmw:osType="windows7Server64Guest">
-->       <Info>The kind of installed guest operating system</Info>
-->       <Description>Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)</Description>
-->     </OperatingSystemSection>
-->     <VirtualHardwareSection>
-->       <Info>Virtual hardware requirements</Info>
-->       <System>
-->         <vssd:ElementName>Virtual Hardware Family</vssd:ElementName>
-->         <vssd:InstanceID>0</vssd:InstanceID>
-->         <vssd:VirtualSystemIdentifier>Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP:65.122  200G -8G(Ram)</vssd:VirtualSystemIdentifier>
-->         <vssd:VirtualSystemType>vmx-07</vssd:VirtualSystemType>
-->       </System>
-->       <Item>
-->         <rasd:AllocationUnits>hertz * 10^6</rasd:AllocationUnits>
-->         <rasd:Description>Number of Virtual CPUs</rasd:Description>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>4 virtual CPU(s)</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>1</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>3</rasd:ResourceType>
-->         <rasd:VirtualQuantity>4</rasd:VirtualQuantity>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item>
-->         <rasd:AllocationUnits>byte * 2^20</rasd:AllocationUnits>
-->         <rasd:Description>Memory Size</rasd:Description>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>8192MB of memory</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>2</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>4</rasd:ResourceType>
-->         <rasd:VirtualQuantity>8192</rasd:VirtualQuantity>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item ovf:required="false">
-->         <rasd:Address>0</rasd:Address>
-->         <rasd:Description>USB Controller</rasd:Description>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>USB controller</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>3</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>23</rasd:ResourceType>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item>
-->         <rasd:Address>0</rasd:Address>
-->         <rasd:Description>SCSI Controller</rasd:Description>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>SCSI controller 0</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>4</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:ResourceSubType>lsilogicsas</rasd:ResourceSubType>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>6</rasd:ResourceType>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item>
-->         <rasd:Address>1</rasd:Address>
-->         <rasd:Description>IDE Controller</rasd:Description>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>IDE 1</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>5</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>5</rasd:ResourceType>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item>
-->         <rasd:Address>0</rasd:Address>
-->         <rasd:Description>IDE Controller</rasd:Description>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>IDE 0</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>6</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>5</rasd:ResourceType>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item>
-->         <rasd:AddressOnParent>0</rasd:AddressOnParent>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>Hard disk 1</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:HostResource>ovf:/disk/vmdisk1</rasd:HostResource>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>7</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:Parent>4</rasd:Parent>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>17</rasd:ResourceType>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item>
-->         <rasd:AddressOnParent>0</rasd:AddressOnParent>
-->         <rasd:AutomaticAllocation>true</rasd:AutomaticAllocation>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>CD/DVD Drive 1</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:HostResource>ovf:/file/file2</rasd:HostResource>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>8</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:Parent>5</rasd:Parent>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>15</rasd:ResourceType>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item>
-->         <rasd:AddressOnParent>7</rasd:AddressOnParent>
-->         <rasd:AutomaticAllocation>true</rasd:AutomaticAllocation>
-->         <rasd:Connection>LAN</rasd:Connection>
-->         <rasd:Description>E1000 ethernet adapter on "LAN"</rasd:Description>

-->         <rasd:ElementName>Network adapter 1</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>9</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:ResourceSubType>E1000</rasd:ResourceSubType>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>10</rasd:ResourceType>
-->       </Item>
-->       <Item ovf:required="false">
-->         <rasd:AddressOnParent>0</rasd:AddressOnParent>
-->         <rasd:AutomaticAllocation>false</rasd:AutomaticAllocation>
-->         <rasd:Description>Floppy Drive</rasd:Description>
-->         <rasd:ElementName>Floppy drive 1</rasd:ElementName>
-->         <rasd:InstanceID>10</rasd:InstanceID>
-->         <rasd:ResourceType>14</rasd:ResourceType>
-->       </Item>
-->     </VirtualHardwareSection>
-->   </VirtualSystem>
--> </Envelope>
Opening VMX target: k:\
2011-09-28T11:38:44.896+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Creating disk k:\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram)\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram)-disk1.vmdk, 419430400 sectors, lsilogicWriting VMX file: k:\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram)\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram).vmx
2011-09-28T11:38:46.802+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Using file size as progress measure Disk Transfer Failed Error: Invalid access to memory location.
2011-09-28T11:38:46.865+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Backtrace:
--> backtrace[00] rip 0175fd23 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[01] rip 0166eb5e (no symbol)
--> backtrace[02] rip 0166f801 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[03] rip 0162f99a (no symbol)
--> backtrace[04] rip 01626bc2 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[05] rip 0175f44b (no symbol)
--> backtrace[06] rip 01673622 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[07] rip 0176f018 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[08] rip 0041a76e (no symbol)
--> backtrace[09] rip 0047fb6a (no symbol)
--> backtrace[10] rip 00480c62 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[11] rip 0041e4d5 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[12] rip 0043de50 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[13] rip 00467136 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[14] rip 004674bd (no symbol)
--> backtrace[15] rip 00418474 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[16] rip 004186f4 (no symbol)
--> backtrace[17] rip 005e82ff (no symbol)
--> backtrace[18] rip 7c817067 (no symbol)
-->
2011-09-28T11:38:46.865+03:30 [05000 verbose 'Default'] Deleting file: k:\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram)\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram)-disk1.vmdk
Deleting directory: k:\Win 2008 X64 -Sharepoint 2 - IP_65.122  200G -8G(Ram)
Completed with errors

*************************************************************************************************

Ps : i can't deploy my ova file with deploy OVF Template... in Esx and neither with ovatool !!
any idea ?

Greetings friends,

I have installed ovftool on a Linux machine with SLES 11 SP1 x86_64

I am currently experimenting on how to use ovftool, as i'm a total newbie considering it's use.

I currently have a vCenter Server 4.1, with IP 10.20.30.40. There i have the following structure:

10.20.30.40

     MyDataCenter

          Cluster1

          Cluster2

               MyVM

The datastore where the vmx is located is named NAS1

I want to convert this virtual machine to .ovf. But for starters, i would like to probe it. I'm using ovftool 2.1.0 and the user's guide says that the VMX type is supported. I thought to use vSphere Locator with Datastore (ds) query type. So, i execute the following:

ovftool vi://10.20.30.40/MyDataCenter?ds=[NAS1] MyVM/MyVM.vmx

After i'm asked for credentials, i get the following:

Please enter login information for source vi://10.20.30.40/
Username: xxxxxxx
Password: *************
Error: Curl error: Couldn't resolve host name
Completed with errors

Have you seen that before? Am i doing something wrong with the syntax? Or in general, am i using ovftool the wrong way?

Thank you for your help!

Peter

Hi,

I am deploying a VM using a OVA format. The  size of OVA format is 60 GB. Currently free space on my datastore is 388 GB.

At the time of selecting Disk Format type if shows me in red that the disk size required is 1 TB therefore you cannot select THICK provisioning.

Therefore, i selected THIN provisiong. It THIN provisioing i am showed that Estimated Disk Usage is 112 GB which is less than the free space available.

But even after selecting THIN proviosing at the time of deployment it throws an error that it cannot create disk as the size of disk is larger than the maximum specified limit. 

My block size is of 1 MB.

Hey all. I know I am using proper syntax, but it seems like there's a missing service running on my esx cluster. I am able to log in with vSphere, but cannot use ovftool to export a stopped server in my ESX 4.0 cluster environment.

command I am using:

ovftool vi://[username]:[password]@vi://192.168.77.111/[serverid] d:\[serveridoutput].ovf

the error I am receiving is as follows:

Error: Could not lookup host: [username]

Completed with errors

Now it's interesting because the server does seem to know that I am using a proper user/pass because if I make a mistake on the password, I am given another chance to log in, until I miss three tries. If I enter the correct password, it seems to almost connect, then fails out with the above error. I would *REALLY* appreciate some help with this guys.

Thanks in advance!

Hey,

Is anybody aware of what network flows exist when deploying an ovf file using ovftool through a vCenter?  Right now ovftool is continually erroring out with the following message:

Transfer Failed                      
Error: Network connection was lost.
Completed with errors

When watching on the vCenter I can see that the virtual machine is created but then it looks like data is never actually transferred.  So I know that the initial connection to vCenter is successful.

I'm guessing the initial connection happens with vCenter and then the data transfer occurs directly with the ESX.  Would be very appreciative if somebody could confirm this and identify the port that the data transfer happens on.

Thanks,

-Chris

Greetings! Question in regards to OVFtool and how storage file systems are handled in VMWare.

I am using the OVFTool version 2.1.0 (Tried 3.5.0 with not much avail) to export multiple VMDK files or disks in a Virtual Machine (versions 7 and 8) to a multiple OVA files for each - at moment tool allows for consolidation of disks in a partitioned state into ONE OVA - Does anyone know of a work around or undocumented switch which can be used to create X # of virtual disks to X # of OVAs for import into another system?

Copying VMDKs is not a viable option in this case as want to remain with OVA standards.

Thank you!

From virtualmachine i have exported .ovf file from the following website http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/how-do-i-convert-virtualbox-files-to-work-with-vmware-workstation/#.

and i recieved the following error in cmd prompt.

can anyone please help me to understand error line 84 and prove me solution .

........................................................................................

Error:

- Line 84: Could not parse the document: 'mismatched tag'

Warning:

- No manifest file found.

Completed with errors.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steps followed:

Step 1: Export your virtual machine

The first step is to export your virtual machine from VirtualBox.

Step 2: Editing your .ovf file

The file you need to edit will be the .ovf file that serves as the descriptor for your virtual machine. You MUST open this in a text editor. Do NOT open it in a word processor as this will add extra characters to the file, which will render it unreadable by either VirtualBox or VMWare. The first section you need to edit is the format section. Look for a line of code (near the top) that contains this phrase:

ovf:format=

What follows that section needs to be changed to:

"http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized"

The next edit (in the same file) is the Virtual SystemType, and it must be one of the following:

<vssd:VirtualSystemType>vmx-07</vssd:VirtualSystemType> (for a esx 4.0)

<vssd:VirtualSystemType>vmx-04</vssd:VirtualSystemType> (for esx 3.5.x and 4.0 hosts)

Believe it or not, the next item to edit is the rsad for the sound card. The section will look similar to:

<Item>

<rasd:Caption>sound</rasd:Caption>

<rasd:Description>Sound Card</rasd:Description>

<rasd:InstanceId>6</rasd:InstanceId>

<rasd:ResourceType>35</rasd:ResourceType>

<rasd:ResourceSubType>ensoniq1371</rasd:ResourceSubType>

<rasd:AutomaticAllocation>false</rasd:AutomaticAllocation>

<rasd:AddressOnParent>3</rasd:AddressOnParent>

</Item>

To the above section, add the following after the first <Item> tag:

<Item ovf:required="false">

Step 3: Using the OVF tool

This step requires you to download and install the VMWare OVF Tool (you will have to log in first). The OVF tool is command-line only, and it will convert your newly prepped .ovf file into a .vmx that VMWare can use. To do this, follow these steps:

• Click Start | Run.
• Type cmd.
• In the command window, change to the directory you installed the OVF Tool into and then issue the command:ovftool appliance.ovf new_appliance.vmx(Where appliance.ovf is the name of the appliance you exported from VirtualBox and new_appliance.vmx is the name you want to give the new virtual appliance. Depending on the size of your virtual appliance, this could take a while.)

There is unfortunately a bug in OVF Tool 3.0.1 on Mac that causes OVF Tool not to work if the current directory is not the same as the installation directory! For example, if you have made a symbolic link to OVF Tool or have OVF Tool in the path, you will see the following error:

HI,

I'm trying to create an OVF using ovftool 3.0.1. When I issue the ovftool command from the command line I get:

Error: cURL error: Couldn't connect to server
Completed with errors

I used the following command:

/usr/bin/ovftool vi://username:password@XX.XX.XX.XX/datacenter/vm/folder/vmname /destination

I can issue the command as above without the vmname to see if I can access Vsphere and to make sure I have a valid source locator.  The command is successful and returns a list of VMs I can use. When I add the VM name to the source locator path, I get the above error. The VM is pysically about 14GB in size (that is the space alloacted).

I can use the same command to another Vpshere server and I'm successful in creating the OVF. Which leads me to think that it might be a configuration issue with this Vsphere server?

What sorts of issues can lead to the above error?

Thanks,

Fernando

I have VMware Player 5.0.0. It internally has ovftool 3.0.1

I used VMware Studio2.0 to build an appliance in  OVA format  - It opened successfully by Player 5.0

Converted OVA -> OVF again from OVF->OVA using ovftool 3.0.1. (This is just for testing. Later I need to change OVF according to my need).

Now this re-generated OVA file is not supported by Player5.0. When I tried to open OVA file, Player failed with error 'Failed to open virtual machine: Failed to open OVF descriptor.'

Is this an issue with OVFTool or Player ? Please suggest.

BTW, I have used the below commands for convertion

Thanks in advance

--hemanth

"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."

I'm using the ovf tool to convert a virtual appliance to virtual machine format and getting a memory size limitation error based on the OVF source.  The source ovf file specifies 4GB of memory for guest OS:

Error:

- Virtual machine has 4,096 megabytes of memory, which is outside the range of 4 to 3,600 megabytes supported on the host.  This may be a general limitation of the host software, or specific to the guest OS selected for the virtual machine.

The work around is to edit the source ovf file and decrease the RAM size to  3 GB and conversion works fine.  But I'm curious why this limitation is occuring.  Is 3,600 MB the maximum virtual memory size supported byVMware workstation or server?

I recieve the following error "- Unsupported hardware version: 3". Please assist. Converting a vmx to a ovf. Recieve error when vmx file is opened.

I am trying to create an OVF from a vm in vsphere - I'm running ovftool on a linux machine, and using the following syntax (I got this from the ovftool users guide):

ovftool username@myvcenter.aaa.com/"datacenter name"/vm/vmname /local/path/tostoreit/vnname.ovf

It prompts for a password, I enter the password, and it comes back with:

Opening VI source: vi://username@myvcenter.aaa.com/datacenter name/vmname
Error: Locator does not refer to an object:vi://username@myvcenter.aaa.com/datacenter name/vmname

Incidentally, I get the exact same error when I try using the mac version of ovftool, and the windows version.

Please help - I know this should work. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, but I have to get this working pretty fast.

Thank you!!

Hello,

I am new to OVFTool  and am having difficulty using it in Terminal on my MacBook Pro to convert an OVA (created by exporting my WinXp virtual machine from within VirtualBox), to a VMX file for use in VMWare Fusion on my MacBook Pro.

I have installed the OVFTool on my boot drive (partition) which is named "LFP OS", in the folder:  /Library/VMWare/OVFTool/.

I have the OVA file on my data drive (partition) which is named "LFP Data" in the folder: /Virtual Machines/WinXP.ova.

I want to create a virtual machine file (VMX) in the same location as the soure that I can then import into VMWare Fusion.  I have gone through the OVFTool User Guide, forums, Google etc. and cannot get it to work properly.  It may be as simple as my Terminal syntax being off.  Anyway, please help.

Here is what I used in Terminal:

LFP-MacBook-Pro:virtual machines nils$
LFP-MacBook-Pro:virtual machines nils$ pwd
/volumes/lfp data/virtual machines
LFP-MacBook-Pro:virtual machines nils$ ./Volumes/LFP\ OS/Library/VMWare/OVFTool/ovftool /Volumes/LFP\ Data/Virtual\ Machines/WinXP.ova /Volumes/LFP\ Data/Virtual\ Machines/WinXP.vmx
-bash: ./Volumes/LFP OS/Library/VMWare/OVFTool/ovftool: No such file or directory
LFP-MacBook-Pro:virtual machines nils$

Thanks for your time!

Regards,

SBNL

Hi all,

I have a problem in deploying Suse OVF image, built using Susestudio.

while deploying the OVF, there's a default SuSE Eula which comes up.

using --acceptAllEulas doesn't seem to accept it automatically.

This Eula blocks my automation work.

Did any of you face this issue ??

Any help/workaround would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Hello..

Is it possible to give vCenter appliance ip, gateway, netmask etc via ovftool? Same way as to Orchestrator.

--prop:vami.DNS.VMware_vCenter_Server_Appliance=10.0.0.69  --prop:vami.gateway.VMware_vCenter_Server_Appliance=10.0.0.1  --prop:vami.ip0.VMware_vCenter_Server_Appliance=10.0.0.96  --prop:vami.netmask0.VMware_vCenter_Server_Appliance=255.255.255.0

When running these commands with ovftool, it doesnt give any errors  or anything, but it doesnt pass the variables forward either. Clearly  vCenter appliance doesnt have any "intelligence" for such feature.

ovftool --acceptAllEulas --skipManifestCheck  --datastore=storage-1 --diskMode=thin --name=vcenter --prop:vami.DNS.VMware_vCenter_Server_Appliance=10.0.0.69   --prop:vami.gateway.VMware_vCenter_Server_Appliance=10.0.0.1   --prop:vami.ip0.VMware_vCenter_Server_Appliance=10.0.0.96   --prop:vami.netmask0.VMware_vCenter_Server_Appliance=255.255.255.0

/VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-5.0.0.3324-472350/VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-5.0.0.3324-472350_OVF10.ovf.backup  vi://10.0.0.10

So any tips? Do I need to create some external media and modify the appliance to add it in, which will pass the needed variables to appliance, and script which will run from init.d on start and read those?

-k-