<p dir="ltr">Excellent! That may save an svn repo</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 6, 2014 10:31 AM, "Ed Cashin" <<a href="mailto:ecashin@noserose.net">ecashin@noserose.net</a>> wrote:<br type="attribution"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Well, if you're lucky enough that the new install is smaller than the<br>
old one, and the VM disk images happened to be past the point that the<br>
new install wrote on the disk, and if you're lucky enough for the VM<br>
images to be physically contiguous on the disk (thick provisioning<br>
would probably make that the case), then you could scan for the magic<br>
number of the VMware image in the block device itself and find the<br>
beginnings of the images. There's probably some metadata in the disk<br>
image header that will tell you the size to copy out to a new file.<br>
<br>
Yes, Googling for VMware disk image magic found PDFs that have details<br>
about reading the metadata. I don't know if this link<br>
(<a href="http://www.vmware.com/app/vmdk/?src=vmdk" target="_blank">http://www.vmware.com/app/vmdk/?src=vmdk</a>) will work for you, but the<br>
vmdk_specs.pdf says,<br>
<br>
magicNumber is initialized with<br>
<br>
#define SPARSE_MAGICNUMBER 0x564d444b /* 'V' 'M' 'D' 'K' */<br>
<br>
... and it has info on interpreting that particular version of the<br>
disk image format.<br>
<br>
Good luck.<br>
<br>
<br>
On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Beddingfield, Allen <<a href="mailto:allen@ua.edu">allen@ua.edu</a>> wrote:<br>
> Oh, ouch. If it zapped all the partitions and installed over, I don't think there is going to be any way to recover.<br>
><br>
> --<br>
> Allen Beddingfield<br>
> Systems Engineer<br>
> The University of Alabama<br>
> ________________________________<br>
> From: <a href="mailto:ale-bounces@ale.org">ale-bounces@ale.org</a> [<a href="mailto:ale-bounces@ale.org">ale-bounces@ale.org</a>] on behalf of Jim Kinney [<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a>]<br>
> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 2:35 PM<br>
> To: Atlanta User Group (E-mail)<br>
> Subject: Re: [ale] File recovery<br>
><br>
><br>
> VM were not on backup. Local snapshots were on disk. Supposed to be demo and testbed stuff but apparently not all was disposable.<br>
><br>
> On Jan 5, 2014 2:51 PM, "Beddingfield, Allen" <<a href="mailto:allen@ua.edu">allen@ua.edu</a><mailto:<a href="mailto:allen@ua.edu">allen@ua.edu</a>>> wrote:<br>
> What type of backups do you have? Whole VM backups or file level? I assume they were on a datastore on local disk?<br>
><br>
><br>
> From: Jim Kinney [mailto:<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a><mailto:<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a>>]<br>
> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2014 01:12 PM Central Standard Time<br>
> To: Atlanta User Group (E-mail) <<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org">ale@ale.org</a><mailto:<a href="mailto:ale@ale.org">ale@ale.org</a>>><br>
> Subject: [ale] File recovery<br>
><br>
><br>
> Haven't had to do this in a while so I'm looking for ideas.<br>
><br>
> VMware ESX host rebooted. The bios was set to pxeboot. The pxeboot process it picked up installed Fedora19 over the ESX.<br>
><br>
> sigh<br>
><br>
> Looking for recommendations for tool chains for VM recovery. I'm not expecting much success but trying to balance reconstruct time vs recovery time.<br>
><br>
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<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Ed Cashin <<a href="mailto:ecashin@noserose.net">ecashin@noserose.net</a>><br>
<a href="http://noserose.net/e/" target="_blank">http://noserose.net/e/</a><br>
<a href="http://www.coraid.com/" target="_blank">http://www.coraid.com/</a><br>
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</blockquote></div>