I have an .ova file that won't open in VirtualBox

Question

When I try to import an .ova file in VirtualBox 5.1.8 I get an error:

Error reading OVA '/filename.ova' (VERR_TAR_UNEXPECTED_EOS).


Result Code: VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)

I've seen some info that I might need to update VirtualBox or maybe the .ova file is corrupt. I'm hoping it's something else. I don't want to update VirtualBox and the .ova file was quite large and I don't want to download it again. Any other possibilities of what this error might be suggesting?

Answer 1

So the answer in my case turned out to be that an .ova file is basically an .ovf file in tar format, as summarized in a comment by Chris TD on a post: OVA’s and OVF’s: What are they, and what’s the difference?

So I just did

$ tar -xvf filename.ova

to get filename.ovf which I am able to import in VirtualBox.