VBoxManage createrawvmdk doesn't work on 2016 MacBook Pro

[marcel.laverdet]

I've had success with this tool on my previous laptops, but no luck on this computer. I'm running macOS Sierra 10.12.3. I've tried Virtual Box versions 5.1.14 and 4.3.40, both fail in the same way:

marcel@marcel $ sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0 -filename win10raw.vmdk -partitions 1,4
VBoxManage: error: Cannot read the partition information from '/dev/disk0'
VBoxManage: error: The raw disk vmdk file was not created

I've confirmed it's not a permissions or locking issue:

marcel@marcel $ dd if=/dev/disk0s1 of=/dev/null bs=1024 count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1024 bytes transferred in 0.006011 secs (170354 bytes/sec)

marcel@marcel $ dd if=/dev/disk0s4 of=/dev/null bs=1024 count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1024 bytes transferred in 0.005971 secs (171497 bytes/sec)

marcel@marcel $ dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/dev/null bs=1024 count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1024 bytes transferred in 0.006038 secs (169587 bytes/sec)

SIP is disabled:

marcel@marcel $ csrutil status
System Integrity Protection status: disabled.

I can even confirm with dtruss that the tool is reading the disk just fine, but seems to fail to parse the partition map.

open("/dev/disk0\0", 0x0, 0x180)		 = 6 0
fcntl(0x6, 0x2, 0x1)		 = 0 0
fstat64(0x6, 0x7FFF5FBFE390, 0x1)		 = 0 0
ioctl(0x6, 0x40086419, 0x7FFF5FBFE530)		 = 0 0
ioctl(0x6, 0x40046418, 0x7FFF5FBFE55C)		 = 0 0
lseek(0x6, 0x0, 0x0)		 = 0 0
read(0x6, "\0", 0x200)		 = 512 0
lseek(0x6, 0x200, 0x0)		 = 512 0
read(0x6, "\0", 0x200)		 = 512 0
write_nocancel(0x2, "VBoxManage\0", 0xA)		 = 10 0
write_nocancel(0x2, ": \0", 0x2)		 = 2 0
write_nocancel(0x2, "error: \0", 0x7)		 = 7 0
write_nocancel(0x2, "Cannot read the partition information from '/dev/disk0'\0", 0x37)		 = 55 0

My partition table is pretty standard:

marcel@marcel $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         2.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            1.9 TB     disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                117.8 GB   disk0s4

Any suggestions for next steps?

[quantor]

There is a forum thread discussing the origin of this bug, (VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk error: Cannot read the partition info... ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=82508). Ticket 16705 (VirtualBox cannot read partititon scheme on a Win10/Bootcamp combination) seems to be related or to be the same problem.