Clonehd variant not working

[Perry G]

Trying to clone and using the following fails due to the variant.

debian@debian:~$ VBoxManage clonehd /drive/tara1/VirtualBox-VMs/Ubuntu-10.04/Ubuntu-10.04.vdi /drive/tara1/VirtualBox-VMs/Ubuntu-10.04/Ubuntu-10.04-test.vmdk --format vmdk --variant ESX

Progress state: VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR VBoxManage: error: Failed to clone hard disk VBoxManage: error: Could not create the clone medium '/drive/tara1/VirtualBox-VMs/Ubuntu-10.04/Ubuntu-10.04-test.vmdk' (VERR_VD_INVALID_TYPE) VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80bb0004), component Medium, interface IMedium VBoxManage: error: Context: "int handleCloneHardDisk(HandlerArg*)" at line 719 of file VBoxManageDisk.cpp

Following the CLI help below it looks like it should work. VBoxManage clonehd <uuid>|<filename> <uuid>|<outputfile>

[--format VDI|VMDK|VHD|RAW|<other>] [--variant Standard,Fixed,Split2G,Stream,ESX] [--existing]

Following the user with this issue here: ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=45000

If I leave the variant off the clone succeeds, but the OP wants the ESX variant.

[Perry G]

I think we may have figured it out. Fixed,ESX (Fixed was also needed)

Could this be explained in the Users Manual better if this is in fact the way to handle the conversion?

[vBen]

This fails for me, too. I want to retroactively split a box into 2GB chunks. The box has snapshots. Adding Fixed as additional variant did not help.

VBoxManage clonehd --variant Split2G myvm.vdi myvm-split.vdi 
0%...
Progress state: VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR
VBoxManage: error: Failed to clone hard disk
VBoxManage: error: Could not create the clone medium '/srv/vm/myvm/myvm-split.vdi' (VERR_VD_INVALID_TYPE)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR (0x80bb0004), component Medium, interface IMedium
VBoxManage: error: Context: "int handleCloneHardDisk(HandlerArg*)" at line 743 of file VBoxManageDisk.cpp

Update: Adding --format VMDK helped.