Sometimes it can be useful to get access to the contents of a
VMWare vmdk disk image without starting up the virtual
machine. For example, getting some files on a archived VM, or
from a backup.
On Debian/Ubuntu, you need the package libguestfs-tools
installed.
To see what filesystems are in the .vmdk use virt-filesystems
like this:
foo@bar:~$ virt-filesystems -a vm_0-flat.vmdk
/dev/sda1
/dev/vm-vg/root
To mount the filesystem use guestmount like this:
foo@bar:~$ guestmount -a vm_0.flat.vmdk -m /dev/vm-vg/root --ro /mnt