cannot mount vmdk (in linux) with write-permissions

[draygen]

Hi everyone,

I'm having a bit of trouble using vmware-mount to mount a 50GB dynamic-sized vmdk that was created using VMWare Studio. The vmdk is an Ubuntu 8.04 Linux appliance , and its the ext3 filesystem. I'm also using Ubuntu 8.04 to mount the vmdk. I can mount the vmdk , however no matter what I do - it is a read-only filesystem.

The main reason why I need write access to a brand new appliance created from VMWare studio is so that I can update license files without having to build a huge amount of different appliances all because of a slight change to an XML file for licensing..

- Libfuse is installed and working (obviously, since I can mount as read-only). I've made sure that I ran '# chmod 755 system.vmdk' so that it has write permissions.

- If I mount the vmdk, then say I do this: 'cd /mnt/root; touch test;' on the first time it will actually create the file (at least it appears to) , if I try to do it again , I get "touch: cannot touch `test': Read-only file system" .. however if I create a file, then unmount/remount , the file wasn't actually created.

I'll be following up with an attached fuseMount.log , but in the meantime - does anyone have any idea's?

Thanks,

draygen

[draygen]

Here is my fuseMount.log...

[admin · Accepted solution]

What type of VMDK is it, not a compressed disk (i.e. stream optimized) type by any chance? You can't write to such disks.

-Sudarsan

[draygen]

That is probably the problem then.. It's the type that is exported by VMWare's own VMWare Studio Appliance for building appliances. I don't believe there are any options to output a different type of vmdk file in VMWare Studio.

Is there any way to convert a VMDK to/from stream optimized disks?

[admin]

You should be able to use vmware-vdiskmanager to convert.

-Sudarsan

[draygen]

Thanks!!! I'll investigate converting ... I should have posted here before wasting my entire day trying to mount a vmdk that is unmountable