VMFS: Unsupported version 5 - How to mount VMFS5 on Ubuntu

Intro

The VMFS is great, but it lacks from the support on Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. We all know the vmfs-tools package and the vmfs-fuse tool and there are a lot of great HowTos regarding its usage however its current official version - 0.2.1-1 - doesn't support VMFS5. The following is an output from my terminal when trying to mount VMFS5 formatted disk (/dev/sda1 in my case):


root@ubuntu:~# vmfs-fuse /dev/sda1 /mnt/
VMFS: Unsupported version 5
Unable to open device/file "/dev/sda1".


According to some various tips I have finally managed to mount the VMFS5 drive on Ubuntu using the manually compiled 0.2.5-1 version anyway, but the support is extremely limited so far (e.g. there's no RW support). What I found is that the goal of the developers is to introduce stable internal API and the mkfs.vmfs tool prior to version 0.5 and the full write support prior to version 1.0. So far, please find the following instruction that will enable you to mount your VMFS5 drives on Ubuntu in RO mode. I was using regural Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 Live CD.

Installation

1) First of all boot the system from Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 Live CD and log in as a root user. Then download and extract the package file:

root@ubuntu:~# cd /tmp

root@ubuntu:/tmp# wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/vmfs-tools_0.2.5-1.tar.gz

root@ubuntu:/tmp# tar -xzf vmfs-tools_0.2.5-1.tar.gz

root@ubuntu:/tmp/vmfs-tools# cd vmfs-tools

2) Install all the prerequisites. For best practice refer to the README file. In general the following should be enough:

root@ubuntu:/tmp/vmfs-tools# apt-get install gcc make uuid-dev pkg-config libfuse-dev

If you need the man pages, you'll need to install asciidoc, xsltproc and docbook-xsl packages too.

3) Configure and compile the package:

root@ubuntu:/tmp/vmfs-tools# ./configure 

Checking for pkg-config...yes

Checking for uuid...yes

Checking for fuse...yes

Checking for asciidoc...no

Checking for xsltproc...no

Checking for docbook.xsl...no

Checking for strndup...yes

Checking for dlopen in -ldl...yes

Checking for posix_memalign...yes

echo "#if 1" > version

echo "#define VERSION \"v0.0.0.0.\"" >> version

echo "#else" >> version

echo VERSION := v0.0.0.0. >> version

echo "#endif" >> version

make: `config.cache' is up to date.

root@ubuntu:/tmp/vmfs-tools# make

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Idebugvmfs -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid -Ilibreadcmd  -include version   -c -o debugvmfs/debugvmfs.o debugvmfs/debugvmfs.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Idebugvmfs -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid -Ilibreadcmd     -c -o debugvmfs/variables.o debugvmfs/variables.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/scsi.o libvmfs/scsi.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/utils.o libvmfs/utils.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_bitmap.o libvmfs/vmfs_bitmap.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_block.o libvmfs/vmfs_block.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_dirent.o libvmfs/vmfs_dirent.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_file.o libvmfs/vmfs_file.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_fs.o libvmfs/vmfs_fs.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_heartbeat.o libvmfs/vmfs_heartbeat.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_host.o libvmfs/vmfs_host.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_inode.o libvmfs/vmfs_inode.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_lvm.o libvmfs/vmfs_lvm.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_metadata.o libvmfs/vmfs_metadata.c

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid    -c -o libvmfs/vmfs_volume.o libvmfs/vmfs_volume.c

ar -r libvmfs/libvmfs.a libvmfs/scsi.o libvmfs/utils.o libvmfs/vmfs_bitmap.o libvmfs/vmfs_block.o libvmfs/vmfs_dirent.o libvmfs/vmfs_file.o libvmfs/vmfs_fs.o libvmfs/vmfs_heartbeat.o libvmfs/vmfs_host.o libvmfs/vmfs_inode.o libvmfs/vmfs_lvm.o libvmfs/vmfs_metadata.o libvmfs/vmfs_volume.o

ar: creating libvmfs/libvmfs.a

ranlib libvmfs/libvmfs.a

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ilibreadcmd     -c -o libreadcmd/readcmd.o libreadcmd/readcmd.c

ar -r libreadcmd/libreadcmd.a libreadcmd/readcmd.o

ar: creating libreadcmd/libreadcmd.a

ranlib libreadcmd/libreadcmd.a

gcc -o debugvmfs/debugvmfs debugvmfs/debugvmfs.o debugvmfs/variables.o libvmfs/libvmfs.a libreadcmd/libreadcmd.a   -ldl -luuid 

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ifsck.vmfs -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid -include version   -c -o fsck.vmfs/vmfs_fsck.o fsck.vmfs/vmfs_fsck.c

gcc -o fsck.vmfs/fsck.vmfs fsck.vmfs/vmfs_fsck.o libvmfs/libvmfs.a   -luuid

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Iimager     -c -o imager/imager.o imager/imager.c

imager/imager.c: In function ‘skip_zero_blocks’:

imager/imager.c:165:13: warning: ignoring return value of ‘ftruncate’, declared with attribute warn_unused_result [-Wunused-result]

gcc -o imager/imager imager/imager.o   

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ivmfs-fuse -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -I/usr/include/fuse    -c -o vmfs-fuse/vmfs-fuse.o vmfs-fuse/vmfs-fuse.c

gcc -o vmfs-fuse/vmfs-fuse vmfs-fuse/vmfs-fuse.o libvmfs/libvmfs.a   -luuid -pthread -lfuse -lrt -ldl

gcc  -Wall -O2 -g -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64  -Ivmfs-lvm -Ilibvmfs -I/usr/include/uuid -Ilibreadcmd  -include version   -c -o vmfs-lvm/vmfs-lvm.o vmfs-lvm/vmfs-lvm.c

gcc -o vmfs-lvm/vmfs-lvm vmfs-lvm/vmfs-lvm.o libvmfs/libvmfs.a libreadcmd/libreadcmd.a   -ldl -luuid 

(echo "*.tar.gz"; \

echo "*.[ao]"; \

echo "*.xml"; \

echo "*.8"; \

echo "version"; \

echo "config.cache"; \

echo debugvmfs/debugvmfs; echo fsck.vmfs/fsck.vmfs; echo imager/imager; echo vmfs-fuse/vmfs-fuse; echo vmfs-lvm/vmfs-lvm; \

) > .gitignore

root@ubuntu:/tmp/vmfs-tools# make install

install -s -m 0755 debugvmfs/debugvmfs /usr/local/sbin/

install -s -m 0755 fsck.vmfs/fsck.vmfs /usr/local/sbin/

install -s -m 0755 vmfs-fuse/vmfs-fuse /usr/local/sbin/

install -s -m 0755 vmfs-lvm/vmfs-lvm /usr/local/sbin/

make: *** No rule to make target `debugvmfs/debugvmfs.8', needed by `/usr/local/share/man/man8/debugvmfs.8'.  Stop.

4) Now you should be able to mount the VMFS5 disk in RO mode without any issues:

root@ubuntu:/tmp/vmfs-tools# /usr/local/sbin/vmfs-fuse /dev/sda1 /mnt

root@ubuntu:/tmp/vmfs-tools# mount

/cow on / type overlayfs (rw)

proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)

udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)

devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)

tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)

/dev/sr0 on /cdrom type iso9660 (ro,noatime)

/dev/loop0 on /rofs type squashfs (ro,noatime)

none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)

none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)

none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)

tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)

none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)

none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)

gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/ubuntu/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=ubuntu)

/dev/fuse on /mnt type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,default_permissions)

Don't be confused with the rw option. The disk is mounted in RO mode.