Expected the format of diffdisk to be "raw", got "qcow2"

[mdecimus]

Description

I installed colima a few days ago and it was working great until I had to restart the computer. Now colima is no longer starting and returning the error shown below. I haven't done any changes to the configuration file or changed anything in my setup. This is happening on an Macbook M2.

 % colima start
INFO[0000] editing in vim                               
INFO[0085] starting colima                              
INFO[0085] runtime: docker                              
INFO[0086] starting ...                                  context=vm
> Using the existing instance "colima"
> [hostagent] Starting VZ (hint: to watch the boot progress, see "/Users/me/.lima/colima/serial.log")
> [hostagent] new connection from  to 
> exiting, status={Running:false Degraded:false Exiting:true Errors:[] SSHLocalPort:0} (hint: see "/Users/me/.lima/colima/ha.stderr.log")

And the error in ha.stderr.log is:

{"level":"debug","msg":"Creating iso file /Users/me/.lima/colima/cidata.iso","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"Using /var/folders/qw/b3zmbngs15dgw50zrphthxx00000gn/T/diskfs_iso943522257 as workspace","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"Failed to detect CPU features. Assuming that AES acceleration is available on this Apple silicon.","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"OpenSSH version 9.0.1 detected","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"AES accelerator seems available, prioritizing aes128-gcm@openssh.com and aes256-gcm@openssh.com","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"info","msg":"Starting VZ (hint: to watch the boot progress, see \"/Users/me/.lima/colima/serial.log\")","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"Start udp server listening on: 127.0.0.1:60808","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"Using search domains: [Home]","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"debug","msg":"Start tcp server listening on: 127.0.0.1:57449","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"info","msg":"new connection from  to ","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}
{"level":"fatal","msg":"expected the format of \"/Users/me/.lima/colima/diffdisk\" to be \"raw\", got \"qcow2\"","time":"2023-07-09T17:03:11+02:00"}

Version

Colima Version: 0.5.5, git commit: 6251dc2
Lima Version: 0.16.0
Qemu Version: 8.0.2

Operating System

• macOS Intel <= 12 (Monterrey)
• macOS Intel >= 13 (Ventura)
• macOS M1 <= 12 (Monterrey)
• macOS M1 >= 13 (Ventura)
• Linux

Output of colima status

FATA[0000] colima is not running

Reproduction Steps

Expected behaviour

No response

Additional context

No response

[fernandojbf]

having the same issue

[fernandojbf]

It seems that I had some problem with my default config of colima.
I just colima delete default and colima start again. Don't know if this makes sense but it worked 😃

[MadsRC]

I'm getting the same on an M1 Macbook. Only change I made to the config was setting memory to 8, vmType to vz and mountType to virtiofs.

Running colima delete default fixes it in the way that it deletes my config and replaces it with a new default. So not really a fix

[skirsdeda]

colima delete and colima start --edit fixed it for me. I changed vmType to vz but I had qemu running before. I guess colima delete also deletes existing vm disk which needs reinitialization when mountType changes to virtiofs.

[MadsRC]

Thank you for the tip @skirsdeda ! Can confirm that running colima delete and then starting colima with the new settings (vmType: vz and mountType: virtiofs) after having previously had colima running under qemu did that trick!

[sebastianrothe]

Happens to me quite often, when my computer goes to sleep.

[abiosoft]

Is this specific to when using qemu?

@sebastianrothe does this happen all the time your machine goes to sleep?

[sebastianrothe]

It only happens with vz. But also not all the time. I can't figure it out. The CPU spikes and then the machine is unresponsive and has to be stopped with --force.

[wujekbogdan]

I'm having the same issue, but only when vmType is vz. With qemu everything works fine.

// edit

The issue went away after colima delete && colima start --edit

[MatteoCalabro-TomTom]

I am having the same issue. colima delete and a new colima start --edit with adjusted conf move forward, but colima won't start anyway. It freezes after 100% conversion of the file system to raw.

EDIT: Looking at the I/O, I think it's not freezing but it's very slowly expanding the disk