That "Debian 8.5 (64bit).vmdk" also works fine with the qemu-img from upstream master branch ==> I'm closing this ticket now for upstream, too.
** Changed in: qemu Status: New => Fix Released -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/905095 Title: qemu-img can't convert vmdk file: Operation not permitted Status in QEMU: Fix Released Status in qemu-kvm package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in qemu-kvm package in Fedora: Unknown Bug description: There is no reason why the vdmk image can't be converted. Even running it as root does not help. $ ls -lh insgesamt 60G -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 479M 2011-09-10 17:47 freetz-linux-1.2.1-disk1.vmdk $ sudo qemu-img convert freetz-linux-1.2.1-disk1.vmdk -O raw /tmp/freetz-linux-1.2.1-disk1.raw qemu-img: Could not open 'freetz-linux-1.2.1-disk1.vmdk': Operation not permitted qemu-img: Could not open 'freetz-linux-1.2.1-disk1.vmdk' I get a similar Error when I try to rum vmdk images directly. After adding a new machine and adding vmdk disks with virt-manager, it tells me when I start the virtual machine: Error starting domain: internal error process exited while connecting to monitor: char device redirected to /dev/pts/1 kvm: -drive file=/var/lib/libvirt/images/freetz-linux-1.2.1-disk1.vmdk,if=none,id=drive-virtio-disk0,boot=on,format=qcow2: could not open disk image /var/lib/libvirt/images/freetz-linux-1.2.1-disk1.vmdk: Invalid argument Runnung raw images works perfectly for me. Hint: i have a symlink set: /var/lib/libvirt$ ls -lh insgesamt 12K drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4,0K 2011-07-26 14:30 boot lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 2011-08-19 10:47 images -> /home/vms drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4,0K 2011-08-19 09:38 network drwxr-xr-x 5 libvirt-qemu kvm 4,0K 2011-12-16 04:34 qemu but this should not be the reason hopefully ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04 Package: qemu-kvm 0.14.0+noroms-0ubuntu4.4 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-13.52-generic 2.6.38.8 Uname: Linux 2.6.38-13-generic x86_64 Architecture: amd64 CheckboxSubmission: 8f12e98536291f59719792d89958b124 CheckboxSystem: d00f84de8a555815fa1c4660280da308 Date: Fri Dec 16 04:24:10 2011 InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1) KvmCmdLine: Error: command ['ps', '-C', 'kvm', '-F'] failed with exit code 1: UID PID PPID C SZ RSS PSR STIME TTY TIME CMD MachineType: Dell Inc. Latitude E5510 ProcEnviron: LANGUAGE=de_DE:en PATH=(custom, user) LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-13-generic root=UUID=503213e4-5136-4e60-8a02-7cbd0123dca8 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7 SourcePackage: qemu-kvm UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-08-18 (119 days ago) dmi.bios.date: 09/08/2011 dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.bios.version: A11 dmi.board.name: 023HKR dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.board.version: A00 dmi.chassis.type: 9 dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc. dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA11:bd09/08/2011:svnDellInc.:pnLatitudeE5510:pvr0001:rvnDellInc.:rn023HKR:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct9:cvr: dmi.product.name: Latitude E5510 dmi.product.version: 0001 dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/+bug/905095/+subscriptions