How To Install OVFTool on Ubuntu 20.04 with Python3

Since I use terraform to clone and provision VMs on ESXi, I need to use VMWare’s ovftool. However, I’ve been having errors lately. The OVFTool wants to install using python2, and I keep getting syntax errors. Seems like it’s using my Python3 install and I can’t get it to install.

If we cannot install the ovftool via the conventional way, we have to find a detour or a workaround to get there. For this particular issue with the failed installation on Ubuntu 20.04, this means extracting the ovftool files from the installation .bundle, copying them to /usr/bin/ and configure an alias for the ovftool executable.

Execute ovftool without installing it

This is how it works step-by-step:

Extract the files and change into directory ovftool (you can name the extracted directory as you want):

sudo ./VMware-ovftool-4.4.1-16812187-lin.x86_64.bundle --extract ovftool && cd ovftool

ls -rtl
total 16K drwxr-xr-x 4 root   root         4,0K Mär  9 14:07 . drwxr-xr-x 5 rguske domain^users 4,0K Mär  9 14:07 .. drwxr-xr-x 9 root   root         4,0K Mär  9 14:07 vmware-installer drwxr-xr-x 6 root   root         4,0K Mär  9 14:07 vmware-ovftool Here’s what’s in it:
$ tree -L 2 . ├── vmware-installer │   ├── artwork │   ├── bin │   ├── bootstrap │   ├── lib │   ├── manifest.xml │   ├── python │   ├── sopython │   ├── vmis │   ├── vmis-launcher │   ├── vmware-installer │   ├── vmware-installer.py │   ├── vmware-uninstall │   └── vmware-uninstall-downgrade └── vmware-ovftool     ├── certs     ├── env     ├── icudt44l.dat     ├── libcares.so.2     ├── libcrypto.so.1.0.2     ├── libcurl.so.4     ├── libexpat.so     ├── libgcc_s.so.1     ├── libgoogleurl.so.59     ├── libicudata.so.60     ├── libicuuc.so.60     ├── libssl.so.1.0.2     ├── libssoclient.so     ├── libstdc++.so.6     ├── libvim-types.so     ├── libvmacore.so     ├── libvmomi.so     ├── libxerces-c-3.2.so     ├── libz.so.1     ├── manifest.xml     ├── open_source_licenses.txt     ├── ovftool     ├── ovftool.bin     ├── README.txt     ├── schemas     ├── vmware.eula     └── vmware-eula.rtf
11 directories, 31 files

Move the vmware-ovftool directory to /usr/bin/:

sudo mv vmware-ovftool /usr/bin/

Make the two files ovftool as well as ovftool.bin executable:

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/vmware-ovftool/ovftool.bin sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/vmware-ovftool/ovftool

Configure an alias for your used shell to execute it as usual:

alias ovftool=/usr/bin/vmware-ovftool/ovftool