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I’ve got a VMWare virtual machine that I want to upload to a virtual server hosting service. The service accepts virtual machine images in .raw format (as per “How Can I Migrate VMWare Virtual Servers into Your Cloud” on http://www.serverlove.com/cloud-server-faqs/uploading-server-images-and-cds/).

How can I convert my virtual machine’s virtual hard disk into .raw format? The virtual machine is running Debian 6.

My host OS is Mac OS X 10.6, and I couldn’t work out how to compile Qemu on it (./configure; make; returned an error.)

I was wondering if one of the command-line tools at /Library/Application Support/VMWare Fusion/ might do it? E.g. vmware-rawdiskCreator?

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  • One way would be mounting the drive and copying it as a block device to a file with the dd command.
    – Bob
    Feb 26, 2013 at 16:42

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VMWare provide a guide for this, for Windows guests:

http://www.vmware.com/support/v2p/

If your guest OS is Linux, VirtualBox may be able to convert it.

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  • Ah yes — that looks spot on; unfortunately it requires the virtual machine to be running Windows. Mine’s running Debian Linux (sorry, I failed to mention that on the original question). Mar 26, 2011 at 18:18
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    Then you may be able to achieve it by installing VirtualBox and using the VBoxManage command.
    – Majenko
    Mar 26, 2011 at 19:14
  • aha, cheers, I’ll give that a go. Mar 27, 2011 at 11:05
  • VirtualBox worked a treat, many thanks for the tip. Mar 29, 2011 at 7:53
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    Specifically: VBoxManage clonehd PATH_TO_VMDK_FILE PATH_FOR_RAW_VERSION --format RAW. The VMDK file lives inside the the virtual machine’s bundle (in the Terminal it’s the bundle’s name in the Finder plus .vmwarevm), and you can find its file name in the GUI by selecting the VM, and selecting Virtual Machine > Settings > Removable Devices > Hard Disk. Dec 25, 2011 at 17:14

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