Converting JAMF’s NetBoot/SUS Appliance to VMWare
I was really excited to see that JAMF released a new Ubuntu-based VM that hosts Reposado and diskless NetBoot today. I was less excited to see that the VM was in VirtualBox’s Open Virtual Appliance format. Nothing against VirtualBox, but I’ve already got VMWare installed and prefer to use that instead.
Fortunately, it is possible to convert from .ova to .vmdk pretty easily using VMWare’s OVF Tool. See below the jump for how you can convert the file and use it in VMWare Fusion.
1. Download and install the VMWare OVF Tool for Mac OS X from this site: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/server/vsphere/automationtools/ovf
2. Open Terminal and run the following command (fill in paths as appropriate):
/Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool/ovftool /path/to/NetSUS_1.0.ova /path/to/NetSUS_1.0.vmx
You should see output like this:
hostname:~ username$ /Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool/ovftool /path/to/NetSUS_1.0.ova /path/to/NetSUS_1.0.vmx
Opening OVA source: /path/to/NetSUS_1.0.ova
Opening VMX target: /path/to/NetSUS_1.0.vmx
Writing VMX file: /path/to/NetSUS_1.0.vmx
Disk Transfer Completed
The manifest validates
Completed successfully
hostname:~ username$
Once the conversion finishes, you should have two files.
3. Next, open VMWare Fusion and have it set up a new VM. When prompted, choose Continue without disc.
4. Select the Use an existing virtual disk: option and select the NetSUS_1.0.vmdk file. I chose to make a separate copy of the virtual disk for my new VM.
5. The .vmdk format is seen by VMWare Fusion 4.x as an older format, so I chose to convert it for maximum compatibility.
6. Once the NetSUS_1.0.vmdk file was converted, I was taken back to the Virtual Machine Assistant. I hit Continue at this point.
7. VMWare correctly identified it as a Linux VM running Ubuntu, so I left these selections alone and hit Continue.
8. Final step in the creation process. I was fine with the default options, so I hit the Finish button.
Success!
thanks for this, very helpful!
Any idea how to do same on Parallels Desktop? 🙂
I’d recommend using Qemu (http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page) to convert the vmdk to a format that Parallels can use. There’s an OS X port of Qemu called Q that may be easier to work with: http://www.kju-app.org/
I managed to convert the OVA to VMDK. Any chance you how to import that file into Amazon EC2? I am getting an error about compression when using the command line tool to import.
I managed to convert the OVA file to VMDK. Im trying to install the Netsus appliance in amazon EC2. Im trying this using the command line tools and getting an error about the source compression. Any ideas?
Can you please tell me how to expand the vm disk of this?
Best
Kostas
Hi Rich,
Is this ovftool still required for NetSUS_1.02.ova and Fusion 5.0.3? I was able to import the .ova directly into Fusion, and get the guest up and running.
My challenge has been getting the NetSUS_1.02.ova into Vcenter.
I’ve got vm running in Vcenter, but have network issues. Not to hijack this thread, but here’s output from various network commands…
ip addr show
1: lo: mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
link/loopback […omitted…]
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
2: eth3 mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN qlen 1000
link/ether [v MAC addr] […omitted…]
ifconfig eth3
eth3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr [MAC addr]
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Again, don’t mean to hijack; I just imaging you’ve tried (and succeeded at) the same thing.
Thanks as always for you contributions to this community!
— Jeremy D
@Jeremy D: As you’ve seen, I believe VMWare Fusion 5.x and above will import directly from OVA, no conversion needed. Works perfectly in Fusion 6.x here.