Mounting VMDK disk image - mount

Question

I have a single vmware disk image file with vmdk extension
I am trying to mount this and explore all of the partitions (including hidden ones).
I've tried to follow several guides, such as : http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/469942-mounting-virtual-box-machine-images-host
I'm able to mount the image using vdfuse
vdfuse -w -f windows.vmdk /mnt/
After this I can see one partition and an entire disk exposed
# ll /mnt/
total 41942016
-r-------- 1 te users 21474836480 Feb 28 14:16 EntireDisk
-r-------- 1 te users 1569718272 Feb 28 14:16 Partition1
Continuing with the guide I try to mount either EntireDisk or Partition1 using
mount -o loop,ro /mnt/Partition1 mnt2/
But that gives me the error 'mount: you must specify a filesystem type'
In trying to find the correct type I tried
dd if=/mnt/EntireDisk | file -
which outputs a ton of information but of note is:
/dev/stdin: x86 boot sector; partition 1: ....... FATs ....
So i tired to mount as a vfat but that gave me
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock ...etc
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

For newer Linux systems, you can use guestmount to mount the third partition within a VMDK image:
guestmount -a xyz.vmdk -m /dev/sda3 --ro /mnt/vmdk
Alternatively, to autodetect and mount an image (less reliable), you can try:
guestmount -a xyz.vmdk -i --ro /mnt/vmdk
Do note that the flag --ro simply mounts the image as read-only; to mount the image as read-write, just replace it with the flag --rw.
Installation
guestmount is contained in following packages per distro:
Ubuntu: libguestfs-tools
OpenSuse: guestfs-tools
CentOS / Fedora: libguestfs-tools-c
Troubleshooting
error: could not create appliance through libvirt
$ guestmount -a file.vmdk -i --ro /mnt/guest
libguestfs: error: could not create appliance through libvirt.
Try running qemu directly without libvirt using this environment variable:
export LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND=direct
Original error from libvirt: Cannot access backing file '/path/to/file.vmdk' of storage file '/tmp/libguestfssF6WKX/overlay1.qcow2' (as uid:107, gid:107): Permission denied [code=38 int1=13]
Solution: use LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND=direct, as suggested:
LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND=direct guestmount -a file.vmdk -i --ro /mnt/guest
fusermount: user has no write access to mountpoint
LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND=direct guestmount -a file.vmdk -i --ro /mnt/guest/
fusermount: user has no write access to mountpoint /mnt/guest
libguestfs: error: fuse_mount failed: /mnt/guest/, see error messages above
Solution: use sudo, or change file permissions on the mountpoint

Answer 2

You can also use qemu:
For .vdi disks
sudo modprobe nbd
sudo qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd1 ./linux_box/VM/image.vdi
if they are not installed, you can install them (issuing this command in Ubuntu)
sudo apt install qemu-utils
and then mount it with:
mount /dev/nbd1p1 /mnt
For .vmdk disks
sudo modprobe nbd
sudo qemu-nbd -r -c /dev/nbd1 ./linux_box/VM/image.vmdk
notice that I use the option -r, that's because VMDK version 3 must be read only to be able to be mounted by qemu
and then I mount it with
mount /dev/nbd1p1 /mnt
I use nbd1, because nbd0 sometimes gives: 'mount: special device /dev/nbd0p1 does not exist'
For .ova disks
tar -tf image.ova
tar -xvf image.ova
The above will extract the .vmdk disk and then mount it.

Answer 3

Install affuse, then mount using it.
affuse /path/file.vmdk /mnt/vmdk
The raw disk image is now found under /mnt/vmdk.
Check its sector size:
fdisk -l /mnt/vmdk/file.vmdk.raw
# example
Disk file.vmdk.raw: 20 GiB, 21474836480 bytes, 41943040 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000da525
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/mnt/vmdk/file.vmdk.raw1 * 2048 41943039 41940992 20G 83 Linux
Multiply sector size and start sector. In the example it would be 2048*512:
echo '2048*512' | bc
1048576
Mount the raw file using that offset:
mount -o ro,loop,offset=1048576 /mnt/vmdk/file.raw /mnt/vmdisk
The disk should now be mounted and readable on /mnt/vmdisk.

Answer 4

Here is an answer from commandlinefu.com that worked for me:
kpartx -av <image-flat.vmdk>; mount -o /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt/vmdk
You can also activate LVM volumes in the image by running
vgchange -a y
and then you can mount the LV inside the image.
To unmount the image, umount the partition/LV, deactivate the VG for the image
vgchange -a n <volume_group>
then run
kpartx -dv <image-flad.vmdk>
to remove the partition mappings.

Answer 5

You can take a look in this article for a download link for VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK). Once downloaded and installed:
vmware-mount -p path_to_vmdk will show the partitions inside the VMDK file. For example:
Nr Start Size Type Id Sytem
-- ---------- ---------- ---- -- ------------------------
1 2048 461371392 BIOS 83 Linux
Then just do:
sudo vmware-mount path_to_vmdk 1 /mnt/mount_point
I tried guestmount, but it is very, very slow. Underneath it creates a virtual machine, uses KVM and so on. Crazy stuff, slow as hell.

Answer 6

Have you got the software package for ntfs?
Try
apt-get install ntfs-3g
on debian based systems.