[Qemu-devel] [Bug 1793016] Re: vmdk to cqow2 invalid VMDK image descriptor

[Max Reitz]

Hi,

Judging from the "file" output and the fact that you say the result is correct 
when removing "-f vmdk", it appears as if the input is in fact not in vmdk 
format but just a raw image.
I don't know too much about vmdk, but I suppose that there is a descriptor file 
that goes aloing with that sk-R12-flat.vmdk (e.g. "sk-R12.vmdk").  So I guess 
sk-R12-flat.vmdk just contains the raw image data which is pointed to by e.g. 
sk-R12.vmdk, and the latter would be the file that qemu expects.

>From my perspective, giving the flat file a .vmdk extension is a
misnomer, and qemu's vmdk driver is correct in rejecting it -- because
it is just a raw file, so it should be handled by the raw driver.  But
maybe it is common enough that the vmdk driver should give a hint on
that.

Note that the VMware knowledge base
(https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1002511) specifically says that "VMDK"
stands for the descriptor file, and it looks like even VMware would
reject flat files without a descriptor file.

Max

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1793016

Title:
  vmdk to cqow2 invalid VMDK image descriptor

Status in QEMU:
  New

Bug description:
  Greetings,

  CentOS 7.5.1804
  Linux 3.10.0-862.11.6.el7.x86_64 
  qemu-img version 3.0.50 (v3.0.0-614-g19b599f)

  When trying to convert a vmdk flat file to qcow2 format, I get the following 
error message:
  qemu-img: Could not open './sk-R12-flat.vmdk': invalid VMDK image descriptor

  The command line used is
  address@hidden:/home/goinfre> qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O qcow2 
./sk-R12-flat.vmdk ./sk-R12-flat.qcow2

  
  "file sk-R12-flat.vmdk" returns:
  sk-R12-flat.vmdk: x86 boot sector;
  GRand Unified Bootloader, stage1 version 0x3, boot drive 0x80, 1st sector 
stage2 0x40, GRUB version 0.97;
  partition 1: ID=0x63, active, starthead 1, startsector 63, 16002 sectors; 
  partition 2: ID=0x83, starthead 0, startsector 16065, 3084480 sectors; 
  partition 3: ID=0x83, starthead 0, startsector 3100545, 3084480 sectors; 
  partition 4: ID=0x5, starthead 0, startsector 6185025, 161581770 sectors, 
code offset 0x48

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