Vmware VMDK mmls partition type

Update - 2022/04

There appears to be a VMDK option now in mmls, before attempting the below try mmls -i vmdk sample.vmdk or mmls -i list

Introduction

How to convert vmdk’s that might be compressed when you get the error

abender@sift:~$ mmls sample.vmdk
Cannot determine partition type
abender@sift:~$ mmls -i aff sample.vmdk
Cannot determine partition type

Credits

Credits for this discovery go to dave… you know who you are ;-)

Instructions

• It appears that the hex value of ffff ffff ffff ffffwill show under xxd if a vmdk is compressed, but file, shows know difference abender@sift:~$ xxd sample.vmdk | head -n 4

... # output suppressed ...
00000030: 0000 0000 0000 0000 ffff ffff ffff ffff

• So if the ffff ffff ffff ffffis present, you can convert it with virtualbox (you will need to install it first)

abender@sift:~$ vboxmanage clonehd --format vmdk sample.vmdk sample-flat.vmdk
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Clone medium created in format 'vmdk'. UUID 12844321-9000-4a2c-0701ff223241
abender@sift:~$ 

• Now try mmls again

abender@sift:~$ mmls sample.vmdk
Cannot determine partition type
abender@sift:~$ mmls -i aff sample.vmdk
DOS Partition Table
Offset Sector: 0
Units are in 512-byte sectors

     Slot      Start               End                Length
00:  Meta    0000000000   0000000000   0000000001   Primary Table (#0)
01:  ---------   0000000000   0068388704   0068388705   Unallocated
02:  00:00   0068388705   0078156224   0009767520   Linux (0x83)
03:  ---------   0078156225   0078165359   0000009135   Unallocated

• If this doesnt work, you can also try qemu-img to convert to raw