HoneyDrive 3 VMware guide

I’ve recently become a happy owner of VMware Fusion and my first goal was to see how can HoneyDrive be imported to it and used with the same features as those of VirtualBox (which I mainly use to develop HoneyDrive in the first place). The first step I took was to build a virtual environment and host a live website within the Linux kernel that was created.

So, here is a step by step guide for converting the HoneyDrive 3 OVA file to a VMware-compatible virtual machine. I am using OS X Mavericks, VMware Fusion 6.0.4, OVF Tool 3.5.2 and VMware Tools 9.6.2.

The procedure should be the same for all the other VMware products as well (Workstation, ESXi, etc).

Instructions:

1. Download OVF Tool 3.5.2 (needs a free account registration) from: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=OVFTOOL352&productId=352
2. Convert HoneyDrive OVA to VMX:

   $ cd /Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool/
   $ ./ovftool --lax -st=ova ~/HoneyDrive_3_Royal_Jelly.ova ~/HoneyDrive_3_Royal_Jelly.vmx
   Opening OVA source: /Users//HoneyDrive_3_Royal_Jelly.ova
   Opening VMX target: /Users//HoneyDrive_3_Royal_Jelly.vmx
   Warning:
   - Line 386: Unsupported hardware family 'virtualbox-2.2'.
   - Line 427: OVF hardware element 'ResourceType' with instance ID '5': No support for the virtual hardware device type '20'.
   - Line 444: OVF hardware element 'ResourceType' with instance ID '7': No support for the virtual hardware device type '35'.
   Writing VMX file: /Users//HoneyDrive_3_Royal_Jelly.vmx
   Progress: XX%
   

   This might take 5-15 minutes depending on your machine. After a while you will see:

   Transfer Completed
   Warning:
   - No manifest entry found for: 'HoneyDrive_3_Royal_Jelly-disk1.vmdk'.
   - No manifest file found.
   Completed successfully
   

3. These two new files should have been created: HoneyDrive_3_Royal_Jelly-disk1.vmdk (around 9.5 GB) and HoneyDrive_3_Royal_Jelly.vmx. Import/open the new virtual machine by double clicking the .vmx file. You might see an error message in VMware Fusion saying: “Cannot connect the virtual device ide1:0 because no corresponding device is available on the host. Do you want to to try to connect this virtual device every time you power on the virtual machine?” Press “No” and it won’t be shown again.
4. Inside the HoneyDrive virtual machine, open Terminator (on the desktop) and type the following to uninstall the VirtualBox Guest Additions:

   $ sudo aptitude purge -P virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11
   $ sudo reboot
   

5. Once HoneyDrive is running again, click on “Virtual Machine” -> “Install VMware Tools” from the menu. This will mount a virtual disk with VMware Tools. Open Terminator again and type:

   $ cp /media/VMware\ Tools/VMwareTools-<version>.tar.gz ~/
   $ tar zxvf VMwareTools-<version>.tar.gz
   $ cd vmware-tools-distrib
   $ sudo ./vmware-install.pl -d
   $ sudo reboot
   

That’s it, enjoy HoneyDrive in VMware!