Ovftool tips

Installation:

• download page: https://developer.vmware.com/web/tool/ovf/
• I tried: https://vdc-download.vmware.com/vmwb-repository/dcr-public/2ee5a010-babf-450b-ab53-fb2fa4de79af/2a136212-2f83-4f5d-a419-232f34dc08cf/VMware-ovftool-4.4.3-18663434-lin.x86_64.zip
• unpacked it into /opt
• fixed permissions: chmod +x /opt/ovftool/ovftool /opt/ovftool/ovftool.bin
• and running it as /opt/ovftool/ovftool

Basic operation

To export VM called ubuntu-gitlab from standalone host ESXi6.0U3 to OVF using Ovftool 4.4.3 under Linux:

ovftool vi://root@ESXI_IP_ADDRESS:/ubuntu-gitlab ubuntu-gitlab.ovf

In my case export created 3 files

• ubuntu-gitlab-disk1.vmdk - disk image
• ubuntu-gitlab.mf - manifest (files checksums)
• ubuntu-gitlab.ovf - VM metadata

To deploy above OVF (with MF and VMDK) to ESXi host under new VM name ubuntu16 you can use this command:

ovftool --name=ubuntu16 ubuntu-gitlab.ovf  vi://root@ESXI_IP_ADDRESS

Error: libpython3.8.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file:

When I tried to simply install latest ovftool under openSUSE LEAP 15.2:

# run as root:
./VMware-ovftool-4.4.0-16360108-lin.x86_64.bundle 

I got suddenly this fatal error:

Extracting VMware Installer...done.
/usr/lib/vmware-installer/3.0.0/vmis-launcher: error
  while loading shared libraries: libpython3.8.so.1.0: cannot
  open shared object file: No such file or directory

What was worst - even Google did not find anything useful (!).

However after a while I find something strange - The above .bundle installer is supposed to run its own vmis-launcher from /tmp/, but it uses something from /usr/lib/vmware-installer/

As workaround I did this:

cd /usr/lib
mv vmware-installer/ vmware-installer.xxx

And rerun installer - and voila - it installed ovftool without problem.

Last question - what created that /usr/lib/vmware-installer/3.0.0/?

Answer: VMRC client VMware-Remote-Console-12.0.1-18113358.x86_64.bundle for Linux (this is version for ESXi6.0U3A - last one that runs on my AMD-X2 CPU).

WARNING!

In my case - installing Ovftool broke VMRC console. I had to follow guide on https://techstat.net/how-to-force-a-reinstall-of-vmware-remote-console-on-linux/ to reinstall VMRC console (normally installer will refuse to do anything because it claims that everything is installed and working properly :-O )

--hp