[Libguestfs] Inspecting VMware OVFs

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 02:12:15PM -0700, Derek Palma wrote:
> guestfish -rw -I -a Fedora15-2-disk1.vmdk
[...]
> qemu-kvm: -drive file=Fedora15-2-disk1.vmdk,cache=off,if=virtio: could not
> open disk image Fedora15-2-disk1.vmdk: Operation not permitted

Essentially the problem is that qemu doesn't support the VMDK format
in all its variations, and you've got a variation here that is not
supported.

You can use vdiskmanager to convert this to a more normal format --
eg. raw.  Or if you are using ESX then access the raw file directly as
described here:

https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/examine-vmware-esx-with-libguestfs/

BTW there are legal reasons why we (or qemu) can't implement the full
VMDK spec.  Get VMware to change the spec license to make it Free if
you'd like to see an implementation.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
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