Parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created.

[SNCDSB]

I recently had one of my virtual machines go down and I couldn't login to it to access anything, so I mounted it as an additional hard drive to another virtual machine in order to access data I needed.

Once I was finished I took it off the other VM and proceeded to Power On the virtual machine, but I got an error of:

"The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created. The content ID of the parent virtual disk does not match the corresponding parent content ID in the child."

Reason: The parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created. The content ID of the parent virtual disk does not match the corresponding parent content ID in the child.

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/4e24c6fe-3c2ad61e-a57c-e4115bbbce6c/SNCTrillium/SNCTrillium-000003.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

I have read up through VMWare's knowledge base about editing the files, but I have never had to do this before and I am unsure about how to go about it since i've never used the vsphere CLI either.

I am currently using ESXi 5.0.0 with vsphere client 5.0.0. I have attached a screenshot of the error.

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

unless you modified any files on the base disk while it was connected to the helper VM, chances are good to repair the disk chain without major disk corruption in the guest. To be able to find out what needs to be edited, please compress/zip the following files from the VM's folder and attach the resulting archive to a reply post.

• the .vmx file
• the .vmsd file
• all vmware*.log files
• all descriptor .vmdk files

In order to download the descriptor .vmdk files you need to e.g. enable SSH and use WinSCP.

Each virtual disk consists of two files, the descriptor file and the data file. The descriptor file is a small text file with only a few hundred bytes in size.

André

[SNCDSB]

I have found the files I need to modify but I am having problems writting the file once editing it using Putty and vi editor in Putty to do the change.

I am not sure what the command is to exit out of vi while writing changes.

from the notes I have gotten it says to do a :wq to exit and save changes but that doesn't seem to work.

[SNCDSB]

I have figured out how to go about doing the editing. I will download all the files but it might take some time to do so.

[a_p_]

To switch from edit mode to command mode press ESC and then type :wq

André

[SNCDSB]

The problem appears to be in the third vmdk file according to the error. Is there a quicker way to go about downloading these files etc, because I know the vmdk's are quite large and take some time to download from the vsphere datastore.

[a_p_]

It seems you missed "In order to download the descriptor .vmdk files you need to e.g. enable SSH and use WinSCP." from my previous post and now download the data .vmdk files?

To download only the descriptor .vmdk files using the datastore browser, start the download of the .vmdk file and cancel it once the descriptor file (the one without flat or delta in its name) has been downloaded.

André

[SNCDSB]

I have attached a folder without the delta's as you said. Hopefully this can assist in figuring out where the change needs to be made.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

According the snapshot chain between SNCTrillium-000001.vmdk and the base disk SNCTrillium.vmdk is broken, which means the base disk has been modified. I attached a replacement for the SNCTrillium-000001.vmdk with a fixed snapshot chain, which should allow you to open the VM. However, since I don't know what and how much data has been modified on the base disk, I cannot tell you how much data corruption you will see. So you better take another temporary snapshot after uploading the attached .vmdk file, to ensure the current .vmdk data files won't be modified.

André