OS not found, when I deployed ova created by ovftools

[Waterwarrior]

Hi all,

I caught a strange situation, I have a configured VM on VSphere 5.1, and I tried export it using VMware ovftool 4.3.0 (build-7948156) and command

ovftool --shaAlgorithm=SHA1 --noSSLVerify=true --skipManifestCheck -tt=ova vi://login:password@172.26.0.25/vm_name output

As result I got ova file, but when I use it for creation new VM I got a `Operation system not found` message during boot process. Ova should be correct because I tried use it for create new VM into virtualbox and it works correctly.

I checked vmx files for original VM and VM from ova they looks like pretty similar.

Might be I missed something special in ovftool command because of which old version of VSphere doesn't work correctly with ova that created with new ovftool version?

Or might be something wrong with original VM? but it work correctly and after reboot or poweroff/poweron actions.

I attached vmx files from VM that was created from ova and from original VM and also vmware.log, just in case.

Regards,

Valentin

[Waterwarrior · Accepted solution]

This problem happened because of the parameter bios.hddorder into original vmx. And could be resolved if make this parameter empty.

Full discussion on packer side here packer 1.3.x "bios.hddorder" in vmx causing trouble with ovftool · Issue #6742 · hashicorp/packer · ...

[mattsao]

Thank you for figuring this out. It turns out that Ansible's vmware_deploy_ovf module works the same way as ovftool and behaves the same way due to this error.

If anyone is having issues with their template not booting after deploying it via Ansible's vmware_deploy_ovf, this may also be the issue.