Mount NTFS VMware Virtual Disk Image (vmdk) read/write

**MrFSL** · November 11th, 2007

I do a lot of software development and testing and commonly use a Windows virtual machine to work natively in Windows.

Usually I use bridged networking samba to transfer files between my Ubuntu Desktop and my XP virtual machine. The problem is that often I have a LARGE amount of development data to transfer and the speed stinks!

Vmware server comes with a little utility to mount the VMware virtual file systems called vmware-mount.pl. This utility works pretty well but mounts all NTFS partitions as Read Only!

Outlined below is a process to mount .vmdk files Read/Write.

Requirements

vmware-loop
nbd module
ntfs-3g

Vmware-loop is provided by the free vmware server. Instructions for installing can be found HERE.
The nbd (Network Block Device) module should be provided already by Ubuntu.
Ntfs-3g can be installed using:

Code:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config

Making It Work
1) Step one is to load the nbd module

Code:

sudo modprobe nbd

2) Next we use vmware-loop, the "Virtual Hard Disk to Network Block Device mapper". This is done using vmware-loop /path/to/VirtualDisk Partition# Device. For example:

Code:

sudo vmware-loop /home/MrFSL/VirtualDisk.vmdk 1 /dev/nbd0

3) Finally we open a new terminal and mount in the usual way:

Code:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/nbd0 /mnt/

Conclusions
If you are having permission issues you might want to adjust permissions on the mount point or device:

Code:

sudo chmod 777 /mnt
sudo chmod 777 /dev/nbd0

When you are done unmount with a simple:

Code:

sudo umount /dev/nbd0

Hope this helps someone. I apologize if this has already been posted. I couldn't find it anywhere.

**OliW** · November 19th, 2007

Thank you! I tried doing this last week and I ran into problems with their script screating 17 netblock devices and none of them working. Turned out I needed to do the modprobe. You're a star.

**myle** · May 11th, 2008

It works! Great! Thank you! It's the simplest way for file transfer. The only problem that I have is that after step two I have not to close the terminal in which I executed the command. Next time I'll try the & at the end of the line.

Code:

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Virtual Hard Disk to Network Block Device mapper
Version: Releasebuild-56528
Copyright 1998-2003 VMware, Inc.  All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Server: Ready to handle the connection on port 1024
Client: Got partition size: 16755732 sectors (8181 MB)

Client: The partition is now mapped on the /dev/nbd0 Network Block Device.

After this, the bash doesn't listen to any command and I have to open another terminal.
Thanks anyway.