VirtualBox Trashes VMware Fusion VMDK Files [+Workaround]

[brianberliner]

I just installed the security update that was released today from Apple.

It said to "Restart", so before pushing that button, I went to my VMware box (running Windows XP) to suspend it first.

VMware gave me an error I had never seen before, saying that it couldn't find my VMDK file. VMware Fusion then shut down.

I restarted and the security update (it also installed Safari 3.1) finished it's installation.

But, my VMware Fusion virtual machine would not start.

Nor would ANY of my VMware Fusion virtual machines.

They all fail with "File not found" messages, yet the files are there, and when I select them, it just continues to tell me that the file is not there.

Is this just me?

There is lots of nastyness in the attached vmware.log file.

Help!

-Brian

[chriswolf]

In my scenario, the host is MacOS 10.5 and the guest is Ubuntu-9.1 and the VMware Fusion is release 2.0.6 and the VMDK

file type is 0 (monolithicSparse), a single growable file. I also do not use AutoProtect nor Snapshots.

Which release of Fusion are you using? Also, is your guest OS Windows? I tried a Windows-XP Home guest and this seems to be ok

under both VMs, so apparently this problem is only manifest when the guest is Linux, maybe even when it's specifically Ubuntu.

However, even in the Windows guest case, I had to change the drivers per this tech note:

http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/6979

The only reason I make a big deal out of it, is because of a number of similar complaints logged over at VirtualBox bug database:

http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/6329

http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1504

http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/2494

Unfortunately, these issues don't include specific host/guest/vm release name/numbers to better understand

which combinations manifest the problem.

[ChipMcK]

VMware Fusion Release: Started using both products since Fusion 2.0.?

Guests: always a Windows flavor, never a Linux flavor and never a boot camp as the VBox tickets seem to imply

Virtual Drives: Always ensured that the same type used/defined (same geometry, same controller) for the virtual machines (are you a thrill-seeker?)

The 'flipping' products is no time to trying a conversion (implied in one of the tickets)

Best

Edited: if -> of

[trstn]

I did run the script on a win7 and it worked like intended on a 10G file. Great.

Just get GNU tools for win and a bash. Make sure not to have any spaces in the vmdk filename...

Thanks for this. Saved my day.

trstn