[Qemu-devel] qemu-img convert from raw to vmdk does not work in vmware esxi

[Milos Vyletel]

Hi,

I've tried to convert my VM image from raw format to vmdk to create
OVF/OVA archive so that we can deploy our OS on other hypervisors. the
problem was that no matter how I've converted to vmdk vmware ESXi
(tried 4.1 and 5.5) complained that it was: "Not a supported disk
format (sparse VMDK too old)".

I've found similar report on this list from 2011 but it was never solved.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2011-10/msg02463.html

Anyway, I've managed to find the problem. Even though vmdk specs
(latest I've found were at
https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vddk/vmdk_50_technote.pdf?src=vmdk)
say that version of the vmdk is either 1 or 2 vmware actually uses
version 3 for streamOptimized vmdk format. When I've patched qemu-img
to set version to 3 for streamOptimzed (or more specifically
compressed) vmdk format import worked just fine.

These are the options I've use to convert
qemu-img version 2.0.50, Copyright (c) 2004-2008 Fabrice Bellard
qemu-img convert -p -f raw /storage/gs.img -O vmdk -o
adapter_type=lsilogic,subformat=streamOptimized,compat6
/storage/exp/gs/gs.vmdk

Below is quick and dirty patch I've come up with that does the trick.
I did not spend too much time looking into code to be 100% sure it's
correct so any comments are welcome.

Milos

---
diff --git a/block/vmdk.c b/block/vmdk.c
index b8a4762..71d53b8 100644
--- a/block/vmdk.c
+++ b/block/vmdk.c
@@ -645,7 +645,9 @@ static int vmdk_open_vmdk4(BlockDriverState *bs,
         error_set(errp, QERR_UNKNOWN_BLOCK_FORMAT_FEATURE,
                   bs->device_name, "vmdk", buf);
         return -ENOTSUP;
-    } else if (le32_to_cpu(header.version) == 3 && (flags & BDRV_O_RDWR)) {
+    } else if (le32_to_cpu(header.version) == 3 &&
+               (flags & BDRV_O_RDWR) &&
+               (flags & VMDK4_FLAG_COMPRESS)) {
         /* VMware KB 2064959 explains that version 3 added support for
          * persistent changed block tracking (CBT), and backup software can
          * read it as version=1 if it doesn't care about the changed area
@@ -1562,7 +1564,7 @@ static int vmdk_create_extent(const char
*filename, int64_t filesize,
     }
     magic = cpu_to_be32(VMDK4_MAGIC);
     memset(&header, 0, sizeof(header));
-    header.version = zeroed_grain ? 2 : 1;
+    header.version = zeroed_grain ? 2 : (compress ? 3 : 1);
     header.flags = VMDK4_FLAG_RGD | VMDK4_FLAG_NL_DETECT
                    | (compress ? VMDK4_FLAG_COMPRESS | VMDK4_FLAG_MARKER : 0)
                    | (zeroed_grain ? VMDK4_FLAG_ZERO_GRAIN : 0);