VMware OVF Tool Release Notes

Release date: 16 OCT 2018 | Build number: 10104578
Version 4.3.0 Update 1. Last document update: 18 JAN 2019
Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's in the Release Notes

These release notes cover the following topics:

About the OVF Tool

OVF Tool 4.3.0 Update 1 is an bug fix release to coincide with vSphere 6.7 Update 1.

VMware OVF Tool is a command-line utility that allows you to import and export OVF packages to and from many VMware virtualization platforms. OVF Tool gets called internally by many VMware products.

Before You Begin

The system requirements for this release are the same as for OVF Tool 4.3. See the OVF Tool 4.3 Release Notes for a summary of new features in that release and in the previous release.

You can download the OVF Tool for installation on Windows 64-bit or 32-bit, Linux 64-bit or 32-bit, and Mac OS X 64-bit. The OVF Tool landing page provides a link to the software download group for each release.

Resolved Issues

  • Importing OVF of Scientific Linux from ESXi into Fusion/Player fails to boot.

    After creating an OVF or OVA on ESXi, and importing the result into VMware Fusion, Workstation, or Player, the VM fails to boot with the message "/dev/mapper/scientific-root does not exist."

    This was caused by a mismatch of Virtual SCSI and Paravirtual SCSI controller types, fixed in this release.

  • OVF Tool terminates when converting UTF-16 on Photon 2.0.

    When converting OVF or OVA containing UTF-16 encoding for Photon 2.0, OVF Tool crashes while calling the Unicode library. This did not happen for Photon 1.0 with the same version of OVF Tool.

    OVF Tool is fixed in this release so it can support vCenter Server Appliance, which now runs on Photon Linux OS.

  • Could not import OVF file containing sound card device.

    When exported from a PC with sound card, OVF or OVA failed to import because the sound card device was badly specified.

    Sound card specification transfers properly from OVF to virtual machines in this release.

  • OVF Tool fails to import OVA containing ISO image.

    When a virtual machine contains a reference to an ISO image, even when exported with "include image files" selected, deployment fails with "Unable to access file. End of OVA file reached while looking for ...iso."

    In this release OVF Tool was enhanced to handle import of OVA files containing an ISO image reference.

  • OVF Tool was calling an old version of Curl.

    OVF Tool had been using Curl version 7.58, which had buffer overflow issues.

    In this release, OVF Tool  calls Curl version 7.59.

  • OVF Tool using older Xerces C++ library for XML parsing.

    OVF Tool was calling the Xerces C++ XML parsing library version 3.1.4, which had known security vulnerabilities.

    In vSphere 6.7 Update 1, OVF Tool picks up the Xerces library version 3.2.1, and avoids a security vulnerability by disabling DTD processing.

  • OVF Tool could not import a VM into vCenter as a template.

    In previous releases, OVF Tool could import a virtual machine into vCenter Server, but not as a VM template.

    In this release, it is possible to import an OVF or OVA and it gets deployed as a VM template, which OVF Tool could not do before.

  • Incorrect network adapter assigned when VM has multiple NICs.

    When OVF Tool imported a virtual machine with multiple NIC devices, network adapters could be assigned out of order.

    In this release, the NIC device order that is defined in OVF or OVA is honored when a VM is deployed to vCenter Server or ESXi hosts.

  • Lack of VM folder causes misleading error in VMware Cloud.

    In VMware Cloud (VMC) environments, failing to supply the vmFolder parameter causes a permission error with misleading message saying "host may be in maintenance mode." The workaround of adding vmFolder parameter was not obvious.

    The workaround was to add a vmFolder parameter in the request. The fix in this release is to show the proper error message from the target host.

Known Issues

  • OVF upload with vCloud Directory fails to send HTTP data.

    With previous releases of OVF Tool, upload using the vCloud Director UI failed with the message "Error: Failed to send http data."

    The workaround with vCloud Director is to specify --X:skipContentLength on the command line.