I retract comment "a)I would have expected that the monolithic flat would have created only one large file just like sparse, but it seems to create a description file, in addition to the storing file."
pdf vmdk_specs-1.pdf "Virtual Disk Format 1.1" (https://www.vmware.com/app/vmdk/?src=vmdk) on page 7, line-34, a note is mentioned that says that is just how it is. "A virtual disk described as monolithic and flat consists of two files. One file contains the descriptor. The other file is the extent used to store virtual machine data" -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1889033 Title: qemu-img permission denied on vmdk creation on CIFS share Status in QEMU: New Bug description: - on a CIFS mount qemu-img claims not to have permissions to write into a file. - VMDK sparse file creation succeeds - VMDK Flat file creation create the flat-file, but fails to write the description-file - VMDK flat file creation succeeds on native linux mount such as ~/tmp or /tmp - same effect as root or non-root - same effect with selinux setenforce 0 a) I would have expected that the monolithic flat would have created only one large file just like sparse, but it seems to create a description file, in addition to the storing file. b) I am aware that qemu-img may have problem opening very large files on CIFS, however, this file is not very large Windows-10 latest updated 2004 19041.388 Linux VM, Fedora-32 in Virtualbox 6.1.12 # rpm -qa | grep qemu-img qemu-img-4.2.0-7.fc32.x86_64 mount options: mount -t cifs //10.x,x,x/$shname /mnt/hshare -o defaults,username=gana,rw,uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=3.0 [root@fedora ~]# cd /mnt/hshare/some/folder/createvmdk/ [root@fedora createvmdk]# qemu-img create -f vmdk test1.vmdk 100M -o subformat=monolithicFlat Formatting 'test1.vmdk', fmt=vmdk size=104857600 compat6=off hwversion=undefined subformat=monolithicFlat qemu-img: test1.vmdk: Could not write description: Permission denied [root@fedora createvmdk]# ls -l test1*.* -rwxr-xr-x. 1 gana gana 104857600 Jul 26 23:02 test1-flat.vmdk -rwxr-xr-x. 1 gana gana 0 Jul 26 23:02 test1.vmdk [root@fedora createvmdk]# du -k test1*.* 0 test1-flat.vmdk 0 test1.vmdk # (doesn't seem to be really flat) creation in /tmp works # cd /tmp [root@fedora tmp]# qemu-img create -f vmdk test1.vmdk 100M -o subformat=monolithicFlat Formatting 'test1.vmdk', fmt=vmdk size=104857600 compat6=off hwversion=undefined subformat=monolithicFlat [root@fedora tmp]# ls -l /tmp/test1*.* -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 104857600 Jul 26 22:43 /tmp/test1-flat.vmdk -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 313 Jul 26 22:43 /tmp/test1.vmdk [root@fedora createvmdk]# du -k /tmp/test1*.* 4 /tmp/test1-flat.vmdk 4 /tmp/test1.vmdk [root@fedora createvmdk]# cat /tmp/test1.vmdk # Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=5f13c13d parentCID=ffffffff createType="monolithicFlat" # Extent description RW 204800 FLAT "test1-flat.vmdk" 0 # The Disk Data Base #DDB ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "203" ddb.geometry.heads = "16" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.adapterType = "ide" On the other-hand creating a sparse file works cd /mnt/hshare/some/folder/createvmdk/ [root@fedora createvmdk]# qemu-img create -f vmdk test2.vmdk 100M -o subformat=monolithicSparse Formatting 'test2.vmdk', fmt=vmdk size=104857600 compat6=off hwversion=undefined subformat=monolithicSparse [root@fedora createvmdk]# ls l test2*.* -rwxr-xr-x. 1 gana gana 65536 Jul 26 22:52 test2.vmdk [root@fedora createvmdk]# du -k /tmp/test2*.* 12 /tmp/test2.vmdk test2.vmdk is a binary file inside it, located among garbled ascii characters is an embedded VMDK description ```` # Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=cf302a20 parentCID=ffffffff createType="monolithicSparse" # Extent description RW 204800 SPARSE "test2.vmdk" # The Disk Data Base #DDB ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "203" ddb.geometry.heads = "16" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.adapterType = "ide" ``` To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/1889033/+subscriptions