qemu.img: conversion of a VMDK image failed with error "invalid VMDK image descriptor"

Question

I trying to convert a VMDK image (Windows installed) to RAW format with the qemu-img command. However, it is failing with the following error:

   $ qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O raw image.vmdk /tmp/image.img
   qemu-img: Could not open 'image.vmdk': invalid VMDK image descriptor
   qemu-img: Could not open 'image.vmdk'

As far as I can tell, the image itself seems fine, at least I can boot properly from it using VMWare Player. I'm using qemu-img version 2.0.0.

Solution 1

Do not use the .vmdk image itself but the smaller .vmdk file which references the image.

Solution 2

It may be the VMDK file is using an image format not supported by QEMU. An example of this is detailed http://brezular.com/2014/07/22/how-to-run-juniper-firefly-perimeter-vsrx-on-gns3/ where the VMDK file format used by the shipped Juniper images are streamOptimized vmdk's, which need to be converted by VMDK tools to a format supported by QEMU.

Comments

[Bgs]

Yep. It does work with ESXi 5.1 vmdk and qemu 2.2.0.

[Clayton Dukes]

This is the correct answer and should be marked as such