VMware and multiple vmdk files
With VMWare (server), you can pre-allocate your image in several vmdk files. But I have not bee able to mount that in guestfs. On file (e.g. guest.vmdk) is a text file pointing to all the other files (e.g. guest-f001.vmdk, guest-f002.vmdk,...). I tried the following scenarios without success: 1- just adding the base vmdk: add_drive guest.vmdk 2- adding all the files: add_drive guest-f001.vmdk add_drive guest-f002.vmdk ... It works if I merge all the files with vmware-vdiskmanager (something like: vmware-vdiskmanager -r guest.vmdk -t 0 guest-new.vmdk) Can I use guestfs without merging all the files in one image? Thanks, Thierry
I guess you are using vmware workstation ,As the files you are using is "sparse vmdk" format splited into 2GB files. You can not open sparse vmdk file with libguestfs. libguestfs using qemu-kvm and it only can support single preallocated virtual disk(flat, thick mode). Refer to the following links for more info about vmdk file formats 1. vmware community 2. http://sanbarrow.com/vmdk-basics.html Regards, Pengzhen On 06/01/2010 07:15 AM, Thierry Thelliez wrote:
With VMWare (server), you can pre-allocate your image in several vmdk files. But I have not bee able to mount that in guestfs.
On file (e.g. guest.vmdk) is a text file pointing to all the other files (e.g. guest-f001.vmdk, guest-f002.vmdk,...).
I tried the following scenarios without success:
1- just adding the base vmdk: add_drive guest.vmdk 2- adding all the files: add_drive guest-f001.vmdk add_drive guest-f002.vmdk ...
It works if I merge all the files with vmware-vdiskmanager (something like: vmware-vdiskmanager -r guest.vmdk -t 0 guest-new.vmdk)
Can I use guestfs without merging all the files in one image?
Thanks, Thierry
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On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 05:15:24PM -0600, Thierry Thelliez wrote:
With VMWare (server), you can pre-allocate your image in several vmdk files. But I have not bee able to mount that in guestfs.
On file (e.g. guest.vmdk) is a text file pointing to all the other files (e.g. guest-f001.vmdk, guest-f002.vmdk,...).
For VMDK we are very reliant on what qemu supports. QEmu's VMDK driver has numerous limitations (including silent data corruption). Therefore it's preferable to use the 'wget' method described in this posting to access ESX guests: http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/examine-vmware-esx-with-libguestfs/#con... (Or use vdiskmanager as you said.) Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#) http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora
Thanks for the answers. I went the vdiskmanager route and it works fine so far. It is just adding a large delay to the script while merging the vmdks. Thierry
participants (3)
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Pengzhen Cao -
Richard W.M. Jones -
Thierry Thelliez