Export OVF fails with “File not found” error

Good morning/afternoon/evening all:

I am having an issue with a single Virtual machine when it comes to exporting an OVA/OVF. I recieve a "File not found" error that appears to be pointing in the wrong directory…My process is

• Clone Live virtual machine
• Export OVA/OVF of the Cloned Machine

I have had no issue cloning 8 different Virtual Machines this way and exporting the data. I am only experiencing this issue with a single VM and I cannot figure out where the issue lies. Exact steps are below with work-arounds that I have tried.

Virtual machine name = RHEL_TEST_SERVER

Cloned VM Name = tmp_test_server

• Clone virtual Machine
• export OVF/OVA of the cloned VM

• I receive an error immediately after I hit "OK" on the Export OVF Template screen. The error states:

  File ds:///vmfs/volumes/5876b9586-hf756475-c8193846734/RHEL_TEST_SERVER/[] was not found

It appears that when I Clone the OVA, it is setting ide1 (inside of tmp_test_server.vmx) to

ide1:0.fileName = ":///vmfs/volumes/5876b9586-hf756475-c8193846734/RHEL_TEST_SERVER/[]"

which I believe to be incorrect. It should be pointing to itself? I ssh into the ESXI/Linux server and navigate to that specific directory.

Even after I modify this file to point to itself, I still receive the same error of "File not found" (exact error as above). I cannot figure out why this is not working for this single Virtual Machine clone.

To answer the obvious question

• yes I have deleted and re-cloned the virtual machine countless times (same error everytime)

Linux environment completely, and I have full access to see all files. If someone could please enlighten me on what the possible issue is and how I can fix it, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.