Deleted vmdk pointing to a physical drive, vm the disk was attached too now will not boot.

[KStads]

Hi, I deleted the vmdk and the -rdm.vmdk- the machine this was attached too now refuses to boot with the following error message:

State

Failed - File system specific implementation of Ioctl[file] failed

Errors

• File system specific implementation of Ioctl[file] failed
• Failed to lock the file
• Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/5f61b2ef-42c21e7c-ba45-3cecef6fa7ea/Ummon/Ummon-000001.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
• Module 'Disk' power on failed.
• Failed to start the virtual machine.

I recreated the pointer vmdk and can access the physical disk in another VM however when I try to reattach it to the original VM this too fails with

"Unable to access file [DataStore] Ummon/Ummon-000001.vmdk" and trying to attach the Ummon-000001.vmdk to another VM also fails with:

". Failed to add disk 'scsi0:3'" 

Any ideas? Ideally I can recover the original VM but I will settle for even being able to access the original boot disk (Ummon-00001.vmdk)

Thanks!

[RajeevVCP4]

Create a dummy VM without disk and attached this vmdk there then try to power on.

[a_p_]

In addition to the deleted files, you're dealing with snapshots here, which cannot be attached to VM's using the GUI.

To fully understand the current situation, please post a complete file listing (ls -lisa), and attach the small (1-2 kB) .vmdk descriptor files as well as the VM's .vmx file to your next reply. Note that you may need to compress/zip the files in order to be able to attach them.

André

[KStads]

Thanks André,

ls -lisa and small vmdk and vmx attachedas a zip!

[root@virtu:/vmfs/volumes/5f61b2ef-42c21e7c-ba45-3cecef6fa7ea/Ummon] ls -lisa
total 401243840
813694980 128 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 77824 Jan 25 04:22 .
4 1024 drwxr-xr-t 1 root root 81920 Jan 11 06:41 ..
130023428 38328320 -rw------- 1 root root 39264788480 Jan 12 04:35 Ummon-000001-sesparse.vmdk
134217732 0 -rw------- 1 root root 307 Dec 12 23:19 Ummon-000001.vmdk
289406980 0 -rw------- 1 root root 307 Jan 11 07:00 Ummon-000001.vmdk.bak
125829124 1024 -rw------- 1 root root 295350 Sep 25 2020 Ummon-Snapshot1.vmsn
822083588 94371840 -rw------- 1 root root 96636764160 Jan 11 06:35 Ummon-flat.vmdk
855638020 1024 -rw------- 1 root root 270840 Jan 11 04:35 Ummon.nvram
826277892 0 -rw------- 1 root root 501 Jan 11 06:21 Ummon.vmdk
830472196 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 564 Sep 25 2020 Ummon.vmsd
817889284 64 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4015 Jan 11 06:37 Ummon.vmx
897581060 64 -rw------- 1 root root 3700 Sep 19 2020 Ummon.vmxf
71303172 268435456 -rw------- 1 root root 274877906944 Jan 11 04:35 Ummon_1-flat.vmdk
75497476 0 -rw------- 1 root root 449 Dec 12 23:19 Ummon_1.vmdk
146800644 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46250 Jan 11 06:38 vmware-27.log
150994948 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46306 Jan 11 06:38 vmware-28.log
167772164 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46250 Jan 11 06:40 vmware-29.log
79691780 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46250 Jan 11 06:49 vmware-30.log
234881028 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46310 Jan 11 06:49 vmware-31.log
239075332 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 51790 Jan 12 04:33 vmware-32.log
159383556 64 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46393 Jan 25 04:22 vmware.log
[root@virtu:/vmfs/volumes/5f61b2ef-42c21e7c-ba45-3cecef6fa7ea/Ummon]

[a_p_]

The .zip archive doesn't contain all .vmdk descriptor files, which are:

Ummon-000001.vmdk
Ummon-000001.vmdk.bak (a backup file, but attach this one too to see the differences)
Ummon.vmdk
Ummon_1.vmdk (not required, as this virtual disk has no snapshots)

André

[KStads]

Thanks André- Looking at the datastore browser there is no small Ummon.vmdk - only a 35gb one? The same goes for Ummon_1.vmdk - only a 256gb one, no small one. However in SSH I can see these files which is sort of interesting... I have added these files all to a .zip and also included screenshots of the datastore browser view incl reported file sizes.  Because I am lazy I copy/pasted the contents of Ummon.vmdk and Ummon_1.vmdk but if it matters I can SCP them.  I included Ummon-000001.vmdk.bat as the version downloaded from the datastore browser (probably not related but downloading this file results in VMWare downloading infinite ...vmdk (##).bak files: 

Ummon-000001.vmdk (1).bak, Ummon-000001.vmdk (2).bak, etc. 

Probably, in my uninformed haste, I deleted those vmdk files from the data store browser as I did not do it from the shell. 

[a_p_]

The datastore browser kind of combines descriptor, and the data .vmdk files. It shows the descriptor file's name, with the data file's size.
Starting a download for a virtual disk in the datastore browser, starts two downloads, from which you can cancel the data file download. Anyway, viewing and downloading via SCP, or listing them on the CLI will show all files, as you already saw.

To fix the snapshot chain in your virtual disk, you need to set the parentCID in "Ummon-000001.vmdk" to bfe88d74, which is the current the value of CID from "Ummon.vmdk".
Fixing the snapshot chain that way will technically allow you to access the virtual disk with its snapshot again. However, the reason for the broken chain is, that the base (flat) virtual disk has been accessed, and possible modified. Depending on what has been modified, you may see some file, or file system corruption in the guest OS.
To avoid modifications to the current files, please take a snapshot after fixing the parentCID, and before powering on the VM. This will allow you to return to the current state if needed.

André

[KStads]

I have tried to reply now at least 5 times and the reply shows but then disappears lets see if this sticks around. The snap shot fails and says the disk image is invalid:

Failed - The virtual disk is either corrupted or not a supported format.

Errors

An error occurred while taking a snapshot: The file specified is not a virtual disk.

[KStads]

Interestingly - when I try to download Ummon_1.vmdk from the datastore browser it works as you say. When I try to download Ummon.vmdk however it returns a 500 error and i need to log back into the web server after navigating to the base url from this: https://virtu.mydomain.com/folder/Ummon/Ummon-flat.vmdk?dcPath=ha-datacenter&dsName=Chungus&VMware-C...

Ok so the reason the snap shot failed was because I inserted a u with to position 1,1 of the Ummon-000001.vmdk file Doh. I took the snapshot and it succeeded but when I tried to power on the machine I got:

State
Failed - File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed

Errors
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of Ioctl[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
File system specific implementation of OpenFile[file] failed
Failed to lock the file
Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/5f61b2ef-42c21e7c-ba45-3cecef6fa7ea/Ummon/Ummon-000002.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
Module 'Disk' power on failed.
Failed to start the virtual machine

[a_p_]

Can you please provide the current infos again, i.e. a file listing (ls -lisa), as well as the small .vmdk descriptor files along with the VM's vmware.log file (as a .zip attachment)?

André