How to Mount VMware Disk Images under Linux. Submitted by jbreland on Sun, - 00:42. And then right-click on a vmdk file. Select Actions, Mount VMDK from the context menu. You should now have the contents of the vmdk file accessible in a subdirectory matching the name of the original file. Vboximg-mount is a command line utility for Mac OS X hosts that provides raw access to an Oracle VM VirtualBox virtual disk image on the host system.
I have a disk image
myimage.disk
which contains the partition table and a primary partition (i.e. a FAT32 filesystem). Think that as a USB pen image.I want to mount the primary partition to a local directory. I know how to mount a partition image using the loop utils but here I have disk image. My guess is that I have to mount the image 'skipping' the partition table but how can I do that?
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4 Answers
The kpartx tool makes this easier. It creates loop devices in /dev/mapper for each partition in your image. Then you can mount the loop device that corresponds with your desired partition without having to calculate the offset manually.
For example, to mount the first partition of the disk image:
When you're done with the image, remove the loop devices:
Alternatively, if you have a recent kernel, and pass loop.max_part=63 on boot (if loop is built-in) or to modprobe (if loop is a module), then you can do it this way:
When you're done with the loop:
Dmitry Grigoryev6,47511 gold badge2323 silver badges6060 bronze badges
scott.squiresscott.squires
Found this:
which seems exactly what I was looking for.
Here's the key part:
where the value of offset is in bytes. The suggested way to get the offset is to point
EmilianoEmilianoparted
at the image, then unit B for bytes and take the start value from the print output. As an alternative, assuming you have the disk space, do the obvious: once you have the offset and size, just use dd
to extract each partition to a separate file.40833 gold badges88 silver badges1818 bronze badges
spewspew
Nowadays you can minimize your work by using
udisks
. Solution from ArchWiki: udisks - Mount loop devicesTo easily mount ISO images, use the following command:
This will create a loop device and show the ISO image ready to mount. Once unmounted, the loop device will be terminated by udev.
-r
there for read only option.1,59944 gold badges1111 silver badges2323 bronze badges
ephemerrephemerr
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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
After this I can see one partition and an entire disk exposed
Continuing with the guide I try to mount either EntireDisk or Partition1 using
But that gives me the error 'mount: you must specify a filesystem type'
In trying to find the correct type I tried
So i tired to mount as a vfat but that gave me
What am I doing wrong?
Eduard Florinescu5,9862323 gold badges8282 silver badges143143 bronze badges
Without Me It Just AwesoWithout Me It Just Aweso1,59588 gold badges2222 silver badges4747 bronze badges
6 Answers
For newer Linux systems, there is the command 'guestmount'. After installing this, you might run following command to mount the third partition within a VMDK image:
Alternatively, to autodetect and mount an image (less reliable), you can try:
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
.guestmount is contained in following packages per distro:
- Ubuntu: libguestfs-tools
- OpenSuse: guestfs-tools
- CentOS: libguestfs-tools-c
ThomasThomas
You can also use qemu:
For .vdi
disks
if they are not installed, you can install them (issuing this command in Ubuntu)
and then mount it with:
For .vmdk
disks
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
I use
nbd1
, because nbd0
sometimes gives: 'mount: special device /dev/nbd0p1 does not exist'For .ova
disks
The above will extract the
Eduard FlorinescuEduard Florinescu.vmdk
disk and then mount it.5,9862323 gold badges8282 silver badges143143 bronze badges
Install affuse, then mount using it.
The raw diskimage is now found under /mnt/vmdk.Check its sector size
Multiply sectorsize and startsector. In example it would be 2048*512
Mount using that offset
Disk should now be mounted and readable on /mnt/vmdisk
MetalGodwin![Image Image](/uploads/1/2/4/9/124990971/822714235.png)
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I found and answer from commandlinefu.com quite nice:
You can also activate LVM volumes in the image by running
and then you can mount the LV inside the image.
To unmount the image, umount the partition/LV, deactivate the VG for the image
then run
to remove the partition mappings.
Ilya BobyrIlya Bobyr
Have you got the software package for ntfs?
Try
on debian based systems.
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JiangJiang
Not allowed to comment on @Thomas post (38 upvotes answer) I would to inform the next person that might run into the following error code generated from guestmount when uses qemu-img how to solve the problem.
Try to generate a raw version of the .vmdk using vmdkmount
Inside the mounted directory there is a vmdk1 file (you raw file)
Now try to load the vmdk using guestmount
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