vCenter Converter Standalone fails with the error: Unable to detect disks or volumes on the source machine. Make sure that the source is a supported Linux distribution

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Converting a powered on physical machine using vCenter Converter Standalone fails.
• When converting a powered on physical Linux machine, you see the error:

  Unable to detect disks or volumes on the source machine. Make sure that the source is a supported Linux distribution.

• In the Converter Standalone logs, you see messages similar to:

  [INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: sunrpc, dir: /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs, type: rpc_pipefs
  [INFO storage ]: Getting stats for swap device /dev/md3
  [INFO storage ]: Swap device /dev/md3 has block device number (major,minor): (9,3)
  [ERROR storage ]: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  [ERROR storage ]: !!! Could not recognize any volumes !!!
  [ERROR storage ]: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  [ERROR storage ]: Cannot find a boot directory (searched for '/boot'); the final system may not be bootable
  [04320 error 'Default'] Sysinfo Query failed with error [Converter Agent SysinfoQuery] the query could not detect proper storage on the source
  [04320 info 'Default'] Scheduled timer canceled, StopKeepAlive succeeds

  
   

Environment

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.x
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1.x

Cause

This issue occurs because software RAID is not supported by vCenter Converter Standalone. For more information, see the vCenter Converter Standalone Release Notes for your version.

Resolution

To work around this issue, rebuild the physical machine from scratch as a virtual machine.

For more information on troubleshooting issues with vCenter Converter, see Troubleshooting checklist for VMware Converter (1016330).