Converting from VMDK to RAW

[Thomas Laus]

> Victor Sudakov wrote:
> > 
> > I have downloaded the VM disk from VMware ESXi and the image consists
> > of two files: myhost-flat.vmdk and myhost.vmdk. The latter is a small
> > text file containing meta-information about the disk. The former looks
> > like a RAW disk, at least I can mdconfig it and mount the
> > partitions.
> > 
> > $ file "myhost-flat.vmdk"
> > myhost-flat.vmdk: DOS/MBR boot sector; partition 1 : ID=0xee, start-CHS
> > (0x0,0,2), end-CHS (0x3ff,255,63), startsector 1, 20971519 sectors
> > 
> > the problem is that sysutils/vmdktool does not recognize either of
> > them:
> > 
> > $ vmdktool -i myhost.vmdk
> > myhost.vmdk: File too small (must be at least 1024 bytes)
> > $ vmdktool -i myhost-flat.vmdk
> > myhost-flat.vmdk: Bad VMDK magic (got 8ec031fc, want 564d444b)
> > $
> > 
> > Probably I don't need any converters at all because the *-flat.vmdk is
> > already a RAW image.
> 
> I've even been able to reduce the on-disk size of the image from 10G
> to 3,4G with "dd conv=sparse" without any ill effects.
>
You have done a lot more with VMWare than I have.  I just experimented with a 
few tutorials and then went on to using Xen.  I had known of the vmdktool 
utilities and used them to move VM's between home and office, but never was a 
serious VMWare customer (too expensive!).

Tom


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