Screwed up the OVF Metadata in your OVA? No prob I guess I can modify OVFs inside OVAs, and then just re-tar them :)

Recently I made a post about how to make a TKR for GPUs on TKG.  But what if you SCREW UP the TKR version / naming... and want to rename the version ?  I think i just did this last night.. and I dont want to re run image-builder.  So I decided to try to use tar to simply create an OVA from a modified OVF + VMDK .  I think it worked ... because the exact size of the OVA in bytes, that i get from running tar -cvf my.ova *  == the original OVA that i used to generated the VMDK+OVF files, that is:

1) input: OVA file

2) output: VMDK + OVF file

3) Hack the values in VMDK file

4) Run tar -vcf my.ova *

And i guess thats all you have to do .... 

 Details 

Just posting my whole set of notes in here... 

Whats in an OVA?

kubo@7SrCMCnVHizPQ:~/ova$ ls

ubuntu-2004-kube-1.6.1-v1.23.10-EFI.ova ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1.mf ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1-tkg.1-f83d41690f8742e7388f2c553fd9a1bb.cert

ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1-disk1.vmdk ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1.ovf

• ova
• vmdk
• mv
• cert

Where is the "main content" ?

-rw-rw-r-- 1 kubo kubo 1.8G Nov 26 03:55 ubuntu-2004-kube-1.6.1-v1.23.10-EFI.ova. <-- big image

# EXACT contents == VMD Is smaller, bc OVA has metadata...

-rw-rw-r-- 1 kubo kubo 1860536320 Nov 26 03:55 ubuntu-2004-kube-1.6.1-v1.23.10-EFI.ova

-rw-r--r-- 1 kubo kubo 1860484096 Nov 26 03:56 ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1-disk1.vmdk

...... post unzipping .....

-rw-r--r-- 1 kubo kubo 41K Nov 26 03:56 ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1.ovf <-- XML file

-rw-r--r-- 1 kubo kubo 233 Nov 26 03:56 ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1.mf

-rw-r--r-- 1 kubo kubo 1.8G Nov 26 03:56 ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1-disk1.vmdk <-- big image

drwxrwxr-x 2 kubo kubo 4.0K Nov 26 03:56 .

-rw-r--r-- 1 kubo kubo 1.9K Nov 26 03:56 ubuntu-2004-kube-v1.23.10+vmware.1-tkg.1-f83d41690f8742e7388f2c553fd9a1bb.cert

So, who cares? WELL If you want to modify a parameter in a VM like the <VERSION>...

This all means you can do it (I THINK) just using TAR !!!

rm -rf ubuntu-2004-kube-1.6.1-v1.23.10-EFI.ova

NOW I can modify XML parameters in the OVF file .... and run tar in this directory, and CREATE the SAME OVA from the OVF...

tar -cvf ubuntu-2004-kube-1.6.1-v1.23.10-EFI.ova *

-rw-rw-r-- 1 kubo kubo 1860536320 Nov 26 04:03 ubuntu-2004-kube-1.6.1-v1.23.10-EFI.ova <-- result of Tar !!! SAME CONTENT !!!