Neat tool to mount VM images on Windows

Found that by accident ....

Got a vsphere 5 VMDK of a VM I needed access to

A bit tricky unless you got a vSphere server somewhere (or vm player / vmware workstation)

The “vSphere 5.0 Virtual Disk Development Kit” let’s you mount VMDKs in Windows

Works a treat – BUT – my VM is Linux so I looked for a way to read EXT3 partitions on Windows ...

One tool I found :

Access to Ext 2/3/4, HFS and ReiserFS from Windows

It couldn’t read the mounted partition still, but by accident I saw you can mount VM images in general with that tool

Which works a treat – even with Linux VMDKs

Nice emergency tool – saving files onto local disk works a treat too ...

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Comments

Everyone

Nice, I'll have to try that on this Linux VM I've had trouble getting files off of. I can boot it up, but the guest to host file transfer just won't work, even though it's enabled. I tried setting up a Samba share on it and accessing it from my Windows 7 host, I can see the shares, but can't access them. I know they are setup correct because I have some setup on another Linux VM the exact same way, and they work fine. Tried doing it the other way too, setup a share on the host, and tried to access it from the guest, no dice. Disabled iptables to make sure that wasn't blocking anything, still can't transfer files.

jibbajabba

Everyone wrote: »

Nice, I'll have to try that on this Linux VM I've had trouble getting files off of. I can boot it up, but the guest to host file transfer just won't work, even though it's enabled. I tried setting up a Samba share on it and accessing it from my Windows 7 host, I can see the shares, but can't access them. I know they are setup correct because I have some setup on another Linux VM the exact same way, and they work fine. Tried doing it the other way too, setup a share on the host, and tried to access it from the guest, no dice. Disabled iptables to make sure that wasn't blocking anything, still can't transfer files.

Odd .. bear in mind though - you'll lose all the *nix permissions when copying to a windows pc .. on a side note - try ftp / scp maybe ?

Or use tools like WinSCP to copy the data off ..

Everyone

jibbajabba wrote: »

Odd .. bear in mind though - you'll lose all the *nix permissions when copying to a windows pc .. on a side note - try ftp / scp maybe ?

Or use tools like WinSCP to copy the data off ..

Yeah I know, I really just wanted to copy some files from it to another Linux VM that I created as are placement for it. Even tried setting up NFS, couldn't access it from the other Linux VM. Never got around to trying FTP or SCP, just kinda gave up on it, wasn't all that important.