5.0RC3 Export of VM fails when HD attached as SCSI

[LeonMF]

I experienced this problem with 5.0 RC2 and then, when I discovered 5.0 RC3 was released, it happens on that too.

I can export VMs that already existed from 4.X with now problems. However, I copied a VMDK over from a VMWare VM yesterday adn got it functional in VirtualBox with minimal pain (yay!).

However, now that I have the VM converted over with VMWare guest additions removed and VirtualBox guest additions added and I'm all ready to export an OVA for distribution to my team, the export fails by creating an 18kb OVA file. i'm presuming that this is giving me the vbox config without the HD?

I've tried the 1.0 and 2.0 OVA variants as well as writing and not writing the manifest file. I've tried moving the vmdk around in relation to the vbox file and I even tried cloning the whole thing.

Let me know if there's anything else I should try or anything you need to reproduce.

EDIT: There is one thing exceptional about this VM in that the VMDK is rather large at 97,733,632kb
EDIT EDIT: The HD is an LSILogic SCSI drive.

[mpack]

The devteam will want to fix the problem.

However, re the underlying objective, what VM software is your team using? If VirtualBox then there is no need to filter the VM through a VMWare compatible transport mechanism - just copy the VM folder and Machine|Add... the .vbox file on each host. Remember to change MAC addresses etc if these VMs are going to see each other on a network.

[LeonMF]

The devteam will want to fix the problem.

However, re the underlying objective, what VM software is your team using? If VirtualBox then there is no need to filter the VM through a VMWare compatible transport mechanism - just copy the VM folder and Machine|Add... the .vbox file on each host. Remember to change MAC addresses etc if these VMs are going to see each other on a network.

My goal is to transition my entire team to VirtualBox over the next year. We've been unable to do so previously because the USB support did not work for some obscure Siemens devices. Yesterday, I was able to import an existing VMWare VM into Virtualbox by creating a new vbox file and attaching the existing VMDK file to it. This was a definite improvement over past versions where I had to go in and actually delete files on the windows guest to get it to load in VirtualBox (Yay).

So, what I'd like to do now is export the new VB VM into an ova file to be placed on my server for engineers to download as needed and import into VB for future use.

[LeonMF]

OK, I just created a brand new VM with 5.0RC3 and it's exporting. It appears I have found an edge case.

Any ideas on how I can diagnose or provide useful information?

[mpack]

Yesterday, I was able to import an existing VMWare VM into Virtualbox by creating a new vbox file and attaching the existing VMDK file to it.

By "import an existing VMWare VM" I assume you don't mean that you exported the VM from VMWare, you just copied the VMDK and created a new VM around it. You might want to convert the VMDK to VDI format, as the VMDK format is not native and hence has limited support (e.g. you can't resize a VMDK using VirtualBox tools). You can always use File|Export if you need to go back to VMWare.

Incidentally, you still need to delete files from the guest: I rather suspect that VMWare tools will never be supported in VirtualBox.

[LeonMF]

Found it.

Having the drive specified as SCSI LSILogic causes the export to not work but reattaching the drive as SATA exports fine.

[LeonMF]

Yesterday, I was able to import an existing VMWare VM into Virtualbox by creating a new vbox file and attaching the existing VMDK file to it.

By "import an existing VMWare VM" I assume you don't mean that you exported the VM from VMWare, you just copied the VMDK and created a new VM around it. You might want to convert the VMDK to VDI format, as the VMDK format is not native and hence has limited support (e.g. you can't resize a VMDK using VirtualBox tools). You can always use File|Export if you need to go back to VMWare.

Incidentally, you still need to delete files from the guest: I rather suspect that VMWare tools will never be supported in VirtualBox.

You are correct, I copied the VMDK into a directory and created a vbox file that pointed to it. Yes, I uninstalled the vmware tools but the file deletion I was referring to that had to be done in previous conversions was loading a recovery livecd and deleting intelppm.sys and agp440.sys which would cause an endless loop of reboots on older Virtualbox versions.

[vvp]

Found it.

Having the drive specified as SCSI LSILogic causes the export to not work but reattaching the drive as SATA exports fine.

yes, you are right about export a disk that is attached via SCSI controller. Nice to see, that you resolve this question yourself.

[mpack]

intelppm.sys and agp440.sys which would cause an endless loop of reboots on older Virtualbox versions.

Actually, they never did that. Intellppm and agp440 present on inappropriate hardware would cause XP to crash (not VirtualBox). The reboot was because you had XP configured to reboot on a crash. AFAIK none of this has changed either. The only solution is to delete these unwanted drivers - ideally from the source VM, that way the problem can never be encountered again. Or create your VMs in VBox instead of VMWare, since VBox doesn't tell the guest OS that those devices are present, hence the drivers are never installed.