VMware fix for Invalid manifest and ova file import failed errors

Recently we got a OVA file for a virtual machine. The vendor instructions were to import the ova file in vmware Workstation, Player for Windows/Linux, Fusion for Mac, and VirtualBox as well. 

The instructions were to take the available package and launch the VM with VMware workstation.

The package contained Module.mf, Module.ovf and Module-disk.vmdk and a Module.ova file.
The .mf and .ovf file were 2 KB each whereas the vmdk was several gigs. The package also contained a Module.ova file which was several gigs as well.

OVF           Open Virtualization Format
MF             Manifest file
VMDK       Virtual Machine Disk
OVA           Open Virtualization Appliance

The ovf file is a xml file that contains metadata for the ovf package
The mf file contains the SHA1 hash codes of all files in the package
The vmdk file is the disk image of the virtual machine, VMware Workstation or VirtualBox. (vmdk format was originally developed by VMware and is an open format now). All of VMware products -VMware Workstation, Player, Server, Fusion, ESX, ESXi support the vmdk file format. 
The above files can be packaged into a single file, known as an OVA file.
The OVA file is a compact file that can be used for packaging a complete virtual appliance

Since the vendor specs stated that the ovf file can be imported with VMware workstation, we tried to import with VMware workstation. However it gave following errors, each time we attempted to import the ovf or directly launch the vmdk file. Below are the various errors.

- The import failed because ova did not pass ovf specification conformance or virtual hardware compliance checks  (Tried importing ovf)
- Could not open virtual machine vmdk line 1: Syntax error (Tried to launch vmdk directly with VMware workstation)
- Invalid manifest file (line: 1)   (This time tried with different version of VMware player)

Followed instructions from this blog to recreate the package with ovftool in case it was damaged. It worked, however there are few differences. See below steps.

Step 1
The first step is to recreate the package from the given ova file. For this use 7zip utility (or a similar utility) and extract the files in the ova file/package into a new folder. After the ova file package is extracted into a new folder to its constituent files, mf, ovf, vmdk files.

Step 2
Download the ovftool   VMware-ovftool-4.2.0-5965791-win.x86_64.msi   (ovftool is a command line utility that can be downloaded from vmware website)
(you will need to register to the vmware site and login in order to download this tool)

Step 3 
Start the install by double clicking the above msi file

  

      

   

     
After the install has finished, the OVFTool is installed under C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool directory.

Step 4

Recreate the .OVA file (with the ovftool utility)

Open Command Prompt and from above OVF Tool directory invoke the ovftool.exe utility. This is the utility which will create a new package.
The command is as follows
C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool.exe "c:\Users\test\Downloads\MyModule\FromOVA_package\My Module VM.ovf"  c:\Users\test\Downloads\MyModule\FromOVA_package\New
Opening OVF source: c:\Users\test\Downloads\MyModule\FromOVA_package\My Module VM.ovf
The manifest validates
Opening VMX target: c:\Users\test\Downloads\MyModule\FromOVA_package\New
Writing VMX file: c:\Users\test\Downloads\MyModule\FromOVA_package\New\My Module VM\My Module VM.vmx
Transfer Completed
Completed successfully

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>

The ovftool command takes two arguments - source and destination. For example, C:\ovftool.exe "Source_path"  Destination_path
Source_path is the directory where you have extracted the contents of the OVA file, viz, the mf, ovf, vmdk files. The Destination_path is the directory where the ovftool will now place the files it produces.

This process may take a few minutes depending upon the size of the vmdk/virtual machine (for vmdk size of 3 GB it took around 10 minutes). If the new package is created successfully you should see above message "Completed successfully". 

Now here is the difference with the steps provided in this blog  
The above blog shows you next step of Deploy OVF Template. However in my environment, which is VMware workstation and Player only, the ovftool command actually created 1) vmx file and 2) vmdk file. These two files are sufficient alone to launch virtual machine with VMware.
So we proceeded next to launch the Virtual Machine given the vmx and vmdk files. However, there was another minor glitch while launching the vm, which was resolved by following the steps in this blog.

The virtual machine was successfully launched and accessed. Above steps fixed the original issue of invalid manifest and ova file import failed errors.

The important steps are re-extracting the ova file contents with 7zip (or similar utility) and then using ovftool to recreate the package. This should fix the issue. Mostly the ova package can get damaged or changed during download and transportation.

References
(1) https://communities.vmware.com/thread/531375
(2) https://pubs.vmware.com/workstation-9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.ws.using.doc%2FGUID-DDCBE9C0-0EC9-4D09-8042-18436DA62F7A.html