Importing the Puppet Learning VM into VirtualBox: unknown resource type in hardware item

Want to help support this blog? Try out Oh Dear, the best all-in-one monitoring tool for your entire website, co-founded by me (the guy that wrote this blogpost). Start with a 10-day trial, no strings attached.

We offer uptime monitoring, SSL checks, broken links checking, performance & cronjob monitoring, branded status pages & so much more. Try us out today!

Profile image of Mattias Geniar

Mattias Geniar, March 31, 2012

Follow me on Twitter as @mattiasgeniar

I recently bumped into a little problem when trying to import the Puppet OVF virtual machine into my Virtualbox. With all kind of imports of the extracted OVF file, I kept receiving the following error.

Failed to import appliance. Error reading 'filename.ovf': unknown resource type 1 in hardware item, line 95

DETAILS
VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR

If you take a look at line 95 of the .ovh file, it will probably look similar to this.

<Item ovf:required="false">
        <rasd:AddressOnParent>3</rasd:AddressOnParent>
        <rasd:AutomaticAllocation>false</rasd:AutomaticAllocation>
        <rasd:Description>Sound Card</rasd:Description>
        <rasd:ElementName>sound</rasd:ElementName>
        <rasd:InstanceID>9</rasd:InstanceID>
        <rasd:ResourceSubType>vmware.soundcard.ensoniq1371</rasd:ResourceSubType>
        <rasd:ResourceType>1</rasd:ResourceType>
      </Item>

It’s a non-required item, but VirtualBox doesn’t seem to like that. You can simply remove the entire Item alltogether. However, if you import it later on, you’ll receive signing errors such as this.

Failed to import device. The SHA1 digest of 'file.ovf' doesn't match to the one in 'file.mf'.

The .mf file has the sha1-hash of the file, which you’ve just changed. Re-generate the SHA1-digest and edit the .mf file accordingly.

$ sha1sum *.ovf
85a0fa4791cb33d8f5fa96ca55ed9c1cb012161d  learn_puppet_centos_pe2.0.1_ovf.2012.02.01.ovf

Now edit the .mf file and change the line where it indicates a SHA1-sum of the current .ovf file and replace it with whatever output you may have gotten from lyour own sha1sum.



Want to subscribe to the cron.weekly newsletter?

I write a weekly-ish newsletter on Linux, open source & webdevelopment called cron.weekly.

It features the latest news, guides & tutorials and new open source projects. You can sign up via email below.

No spam. Just some good, practical Linux & open source content.