Trying to clone/

[skimmer333]

Hi,

I am trying to convert a VDMK to a VDI. The VDMK is Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.1.3-VISION-INSTALL-disk1. This VDMK is located on an external drive (F), so I can take to with me.
I can successfully use the VDMK in VB. My problem, is that it creates a snapshot file on the C drive, even though i have pointed the VM to a folder on the F drive to use.
Not knowing originally it was doing this, I deleted the snapshot file, as I thought it was a snapshot i accidentally took. Nope. Cos now that I try to open that VM, I get error messages. (Sorry forgot to copy them down).

So, now I'm trying to convert the VDMK to a VDI, as I seem to not have issues with VDI's creating files on the C drive.
However, when I try to convert the VDMK file that is on my F drive, I get the following just after 30%

Failed to open a session for the virtual machine bits.

No error info.

Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: ProgressProxy
Interface: IProgress {c20238e4-3221-4d3f-8891-81ce92d9f913}

Is there something else I can be doing to convert this VDMK? Having it create a snapshot file on the C is not an option, as I will be using it on multiple machines, therefore needing it as a VDI.

Cheers,
RussH.

[socratis]

Is there a chance that F: is formatted as FAT? Because there is a limit per file of 4GB for files on a FAT filesystem. VMDKs can split in 2GB chunks to avoid this restriction, but VDIs do not. If you want to use this on multiple machines, convert it to NTFS.

[mpack]

My problem, is that it creates a snapshot file on the C drive, even though i have pointed the VM to a folder on the F drive to use.

How exactly did you do that?

p.s. In this regard, the handling of VMDK and VDI is identical, so I don't expect conversion to VDI to help.

I suspect that all you did was mount the VMDK from the external drive, and you changed the "Default Machine Folder" preference. Unfortunately the latter has nothing to do with where an existing VM stores its files. Your basic mistake was locating the VMDK on an external drive and hence outside the VM folder - you should have located the entire VM on that drive. Now it will be tricky if you've been using snapshots.

Also, please post "showhdinfo" results for the VMDK. If you didn't create a snapshot then I suspect it's a compressed VMDK taken from an OVx, hence is read only.

[skimmer333]

My problem, is that it creates a snapshot file on the C drive, even though i have pointed the VM to a folder on the F drive to use.

How exactly did you do that?

p.s. In this regard, the handling of VMDK and VDI is identical, so I don't expect conversion to VDI to help.

I suspect that all you did was mount the VMDK from the external drive, and you changed the "Default Machine Folder" preference. Unfortunately the latter has nothing to do with where an existing VM stores its files. Your basic mistake was locating the VMDK on an external drive and hence outside the VM folder - you should have located the entire VM on that drive. Now it will be tricky if you've been using snapshots.

Also, please post "showhdinfo" results for the VMDK. If you didn't create a snapshot then I suspect it's a compressed VMDK taken from an OVx, hence is read only.

Hi,
I created the VM by using the Import Appliance feature. An OVF and a VMDK file are provided. During the import, when show the Appliance settings page, I changed the location of the Hard Disk Controller (SATA) - Virtual Disk Image, to be located on my F drive. It was pointing to my C drive.

Showhdinfo:

Code: Select all

Business-Suite-12.1.3-VISION-INSTALL-disk1.vmdk
UUID:           7b812c80-8a20-418d-9405-3fc75df48d47
Parent UUID:    base
State:          created
Type:           normal (base)
Location:       F:\zVM\R1213a\Oracle-E-Business-Suite-12.1.3-VISION-INSTALL-disk1.vmdk
Storage format: VMDK
Format variant: dynamic streamOptimized
Capacity:       307200 MBytes
Size on disk:   55118 MBytes
Child UUIDs:    0910a8a6-67ba-41a1-8955-b5089c5788b3

There is a file located on my C drive:
C:\Users\xxxxxxx\VirtualBox VMs\R12.1.3\Snapshots\{0910a8a6-67ba-41a1-8955-b5089c5788b3}.vmdk which is 4,559,296KB in size

I haven't been using snapshots, as they aren't required.

All I basically want, is to have the vmdk file located on my F drive, so its portable. (My F drive is a WD passport 2TB NTFS formatted).

Edit: Just noticed under the Virtual Media Manager, that the "child" file is a Differencing file, yet the "parent" file is of a Normal type. So not sure why the parent file is creating child files, or if possible, to make the parent file not read-only. (i've checked and the parent file and the OVF file aren't marked as read-only)

[mpack]

So you actually didn't point VirtualBox at the alternate folder in any way, you just manually relocated one media file there.

VirtualBox created the differencing file automatically (it isn't technically a snapshot), because the parent VMDK is indeed treated as read-only, having been compressed ("Stream-Optimized") when it was added to the OVA. You can see this in the "showhdinfo" output. VBox can't use compressed disk images directly. VirtualBox should have decompressed it when you imported the appliance... which I assume therefore you didn't do, you just copied the VMDK manually.

The quickest fix for you is probably to select your preferred file in Preferences|Default Machine Folder, then clone your existing VM, selecting current state only. That should produce an uncompressed clone.

Alternatively, import the VM properly, then relocate the entire VM (don't just move the VMDK).

[skimmer333]

Thanks for your time mpack.
I think I will open another thread, as I have just downloaded all the files again edelivery.oracle.com to try the Import Appliance option and am getting different errors now.

Cheers,
Skimmer.