qemu: "not a bootable disk"

Question

So I followed exactly the instructions on how to run QEMU-KVM with VMware's disk images v6 directly:

  kvm -drive file=zimbra-000001.vmdk,boot=on -net nic,macaddr=00:0c:29:c3:93:b9 -net tap -uuid 564d3f3d-3280-5bf2-9431-21c9b2c393b9

(replacing the various parameters with my own, of course, after looking them up in the VMX configuration file)

And instead of seeing the VM starting (as I am used to from my VMWare Workstation 6.5, running on an older Ubuntu), I receive:

Boot failed:  not a bootable disk

I am running Ubuntu 14.04. Is there anything else that I needed to do before attempting this shortcut?

Solution

I think that it assumes that the drive is of type RAW, but it looks like you're using vmdk. I would check the disk type in the machine's current config and make sure that it is trying to read a disk of type vmdk

Comments

[Bill The Ape]

Thanks. Your answer allowed me to proceed to booting, seeing the nice Starting Windows 7 logo and then... the BSOD: A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO. Technical information: STOP: 0x00000074 (0x00000002,0x86973BA8,0x00000002,0xC000009A)

[Bill The Ape]

Same exact set of files (unmodified) continues to open perfectly with VMWare Player 7. Looks like QEMU-KVM's claims to native support to VMware's disk images v6 have been exaggerated.

[Bill The Ape]

kvm-img convert -O qcow2 conversion completes successfully but upon running the VM, it generates the same exact BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO error. I think I am going to stick with VMWare, pointed to it via this howto.