Extract files from VMDK images

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To extract files from .vmdk files on the CLI, first 2 tools are needed

app-arch/p7zip
sys-fs/multipath-tools

VMWare disk files are compressed archives. First step is to decompress the vmdk archive

user@host $ 7z e virtualdisk.vmdk

This command will decompress the archive and extract the included partitions. The extracted partitions might look like this

user@host $ ls -l
total 48452008
-rw-r--r-- 1 user usergroup   510656512 Jan 11 15:08  0.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 user usergroup 42435870720 Jan 11 19:01  1.lvm
-rw-r--r-- 1 user usergroup     1048576 Jan 11 15:08  2
-rw------- 1 user usergroup  6671171584 Jan 11 15:08  virtualdisk-disk1.vmdk

In the vmdk file contained - 0.img file, - 1.lvm file - 2 file

In this particular case the interesting files have been included in the 1.lvm file. Now the .lvm file needs to be mounted to gain access to the files.

Execute losetup which sets up and controls loop devices:

root@host # losetup /dev/loop0 1.lvm

Use kpartx tool which creates device maps from partition tables:

root@host # kpartx -a /dev/loop0

Mount the partition file to a mount point in the tree here /dev/partition/

root@host # mount /dev/mapper/
completing device or mount point
operating-system-vg-root@    operating-system-vg-swap_1@  loop0p1

root@host # mount /dev/mapper/operating-system-vg-root@ /mnt/partition/

At this moment the interesting files can be accessed via the mountpoint:

user@host $ df -h | grep mnt
/dev/mapper/operating-system-vg-root   33G  4.3G   27G  14% /mnt/partition

Change to /mnt/partition to access the interesting files:

user@host $ cd /mnt/partition
user@host $ ls -l
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 May 27  2017 bin/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 May 27  2017 boot/
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root  4096 May 27  2017 dev/
drwxr-xr-x 97 root root  4096 Jan 11 13:56 etc/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Apr 12  2016 home/
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root  4096 May 27  2017 lib/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Feb 15  2017 mnt/
drwxr-xr-x  9 root root  4096 May 27  2017 opt/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Apr 12  2016 proc/
drwx------  3 root root  4096 Jan 11 15:04 root/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 May 27  2017 sbin/
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Feb  5  2016 sys/
drwxrwxrwt  8 root root  4096 Jan 11 15:07 tmp/
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root  4096 May 27  2017 usr/
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root  4096 May 27  2017 var/