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I want to run vmware PKS in a KVM virtual machine and have the official .ova file as a starting point.

I am aware of the conversion from .vmdk --> .qcow2 basically but am still struggeling with the VM Settings. I guess my problems start with having 2 vmdks to begin with.

Inspecting the converted raw images I found out that the 1.vmdk has 2 partitions (one probably the boot partition then second one /.

Regardless of this I'd wanted to try getting more wisdom from the .ovf file and translate this to my KVM .xml.

$ grep -e "Memory RAMSize" -e "CPU count" -e "Netw" -e "Disk" pks-v1.7.3-rev.1-f5289d94.ovf 
  <NetworkSection>
    <Network ovf:name="VM Network">
      <Description>VM Network</Description>
    </Network>
  </NetworkSection>
  <DiskSection>
    <Disk ovf:capacity="20" ovf:capacityAllocationUnits="byte * 2^30" ovf:diskId="system" ovf:fileRef="system.vmdk_id" ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized" ovf:populatedSize="4294967296" />
    <Disk ovf:capacity="20" ovf:capacityAllocationUnits="byte * 2^30" ovf:diskId="data" ovf:fileRef="data.vmdk_id" ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#streamOptimized" ovf:populatedSize="17179869184" />
  </DiskSection>
      <Info>Networking Properties</Info>
      <Category>2. Networking Properties</Category>
        <Label>2.1. Network IP Address</Label>
        <Label>2.2. Network Netmask</Label>
        <Label>2.7. Docker Container Network Subnet</Label>
        <Label>2.8. Docker Container Network Gateway</Label>
        <rasd:Connection>VM Network</rasd:Connection>

(taken from this article) should reveal what I need. However I can't figure out what I want really, particularly in the <DiskSection>

From my previous investigations I know that disk1 is 4GiB (containing 2 partitions), while disk2 has 12GiB. Both do not really correspond to the mentioned 20 in here. I guess it may be related to the nature of the disksize being dynamic.

Can anybody kindly advise how to translate the above output to a KVM compatible .xml/setup?

--- Addition ---

to make this complete ... this is the (relevant) content of the .ovf file I am grepping from.

--- Addition 2 ---

when I just convert the .vmdk into .qcow2 images, the machine shows a very short logo (Proton OS, which is the OS used here) wich then disappears into a black screen.

vrms
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    So I got bored and pulled down a copy of the original Photon OS 4.0 OVA to play with. Of course when I uploaded it to ESXi it worked fine. On KVM, I extracted the VMDK, converted it to qcow2, and it failed to boot just after grub with a flashing cursor. So too when I converted it to a raw image. And when I just booted straight from the VMDK, it still failed to boot. And the same after removing quiet from the boot command line. I think grub can't load the kernel or the initrd, but it's not obvious to me why. – Michael Hampton Jul 18 '21 at 20:01
  • neither importing the .ova to VirtualBox (running on a different host then mentioned KVM) works (without a real indication of the reason). – vrms Jul 19 '21 at 05:25
  • i guess I'll try to spin up a vmware instance inside a KVM machine and run the .ova from there. – vrms Jul 19 '21 at 05:35

0 Answers0