Bug 200606

Summary:	[mkimg] Add support for Stream-Optimized (compressed) VMDK
Product:	Base System	Reporter:	Enji Cooper <ngie>
Component:	bin	Assignee:	freebsd-bugs (Nobody) <bugs>
Status:	New ---
Severity:	Affects Some People	CC:	benno, bms, emaste, marcel
Priority:	---
Version:	CURRENT
Hardware:	Any
OS:	Any

Description Enji Cooper freebsd_committer

2015-06-02 22:22:28 UTC

It seems that mkimg doesn't support VMDK 5 formats yet. It would be nice if it did:

$ cat poc.sh 
#!/bin/sh

set -e

rm -Rf root || :
mkdir root
fetch -o - http://buildbiox.west.isilon.com/snapshots/b.ript.bsd10p2.230/obj.RELEASE/install.tar.gz | \
    tar xpzf - -C root
# Give us 1GB more space to play with on /
fs_size=$(( $(du -s root | awk '{ print $1 }') + 1024 * 1024 * 1024 ))
makefs -M $fs_size -o bsize=8192,fsize=1024 root.md root
mkimg -f vmdk \
      -s gpt -b root/boot/pmbr -p freebsd-boot:=root/boot/gptboot -p freebsd-ufs:=root.md \
      -o b.ript.bsd10p2.230.release.vmdk

This is a placeholder bug for the requested enhancement. I don't know where the format file's docs are, but it might be doable for either Juniper, Isilon, or someone else to implement the enhancement.

Comment 1 Marcel Moolenaar freebsd_committer

2015-06-03 05:08:41 UTC

What exactly is not working?
Put differently: why is version 5 support needed or desirable?

It’s impossible to make changes to mkimg without knowing what problem is being solved
and thus without a way to test that the change is good. So let's collect evidence for why VMDK 5 is good to have and when we have it "overwhelmingly", adding VMDK 5 shouldn't be too hard.

See also:
https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vddk/vmdk_50_technote.pdf

Comment 2 Enji Cooper freebsd_committer

2015-06-03 05:24:07 UTC

(In reply to Marcel Moolenaar from comment #1)

Sorry for not adding more context sooner. It's been a busy day.

Basically, there are some features like the "Stream-Optimized Compressed" support which is a performance enhancement ("sparse VMDKs for networks").

Comment 3 bms 2015-06-10 09:04:36 UTC

Marcel,

Totally needed. I haven't checked recently but I think pfSense may even be shipping their virtual appliance this way. I use VMDK streamOptimized to get FreeBSD VMs down to a reasonable size for archival.

You may want to look at: http://sanbarrow.com/vmdk-handbook.html

cheers
Bruce

Comment 4 Ed Maste freebsd_committer

2021-11-22 01:17:21 UTC

Reset assignee as Marcel has handed in his commit bit