[How to] Mount VMFS spreads accross several extents
... / [How to] Mount VMFS sprea...
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Question

[How to] Mount VMFS spreads accross several extents

by
6020
Created on 2023-02-07 14:17:43 (edited on 2024-09-04 14:25:01) in Dedicated Servers-old

Hello,

If you a have a VMFS volume spreads accross several disks and want to mount this volume in your rescue-customer boot you will obtain a Segmentation faults because of a bug in the vmfs6-tools available in the Debian repository:

$ vmfs6-fuse /dev/sdd1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1 /root/mnt
VMFS version: 6
Segmentation fault

Thanks to this issue, you will be able to mount this volume: https://github.com/weafon/vmfs6-tool/issues/5

**HOW-TO:**

git clone https://github.com/weafon/vmfs6-tool.git
cd vmfs6-tool
git checkout vmfs6-64-init_pb_first
./configure && make

You will find the `vmfs-fuse` binary in `./vmfs-fuse/vmfs-fuse`.

Now, you need to find the "head" of your VMFS volume. To do that, use the `head /dev/sdX1 | strings` on each partition until you find the name of your datastore.
You just found the first disk to use in the `vmfs-fuse` command (let's say `/dev/sdd1`).

Now, you need to find the correct order of the other disks.
Let's say others partitions of your volume are `/dev/sda1` and `/dev/sdb1`.

First try `vmfs6-fuse/vmfs-fuse/vmfs-fuse /dev/sdd1 /dev/sd1 /dev/sdb1 /mnt`.
Try to perform a `tree`, a `du` or a `ls` on each folder of `/mnt`. If you can see all your files you are good!
If you obtain a `Transport endpoint is not connected` it means the order of your disks is not correct. Umount your `/mnt` and try another combination.

Hope it will work for you!
Thanks to weafon for the fix of vmfs-fuse!