OrbStack falsely claims that data is empty after using Migration Assistant #2364
Description
Describe the bug
I recently set up a new mac using Migration Assistant. The orbstack docs claim that Migration Assistant doesn't support sparse files, but I didn't encounter any errors when running Migration Assistant and data.img made it over to the new mac and looks correct.
% ls -lah ~/Library/Group\ Containers/HUAQ24HBR6.dev.orbstack/data
total 82888240
drwxr-xr-x@ 6 user staff 192B Mar 17 09:58 .
drwx------@ 5 user staff 160B Dec 28 2024 ..
lrwxrwxrwx@ 1 user staff 12B Feb 6 15:53 data.img -> data.img.raw
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user staff 1.3T Mar 16 15:01 data.img.raw
-rw-r--r--@ 1 user staff 539B Feb 6 15:53 README.txt
-rw-------@ 1 user staff 1.0G Mar 17 09:58 swap.img
% du -h ~/Library/Group\ Containers/HUAQ24HBR6.dev.orbstack/data/data.img.raw
40G /Users/user/Library/Group Containers/HUAQ24HBR6.dev.orbstack/data/data.img.raw
However when I try to run orbstack (after doing a chown fixup that the cli suggested), I get an error saying that OrbStack data has been replaced by an empty file, and an option to delete everything and reset.
However raw.data.img is not empty and appears to be fine?
% head -c 5000 ~/Library/Group\ Containers/HUAQ24HBR6.dev.orbstack/data/data.img.raw | hexdump -C
00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
000001c0 02 00 ee ff ff ff 01 00 00 00 ff ff ff ff 00 00 |................|
000001d0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
000001f0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa |..............U.|
00000200 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54 00 00 01 00 5c 00 00 00 |EFI PART....\...|
00000210 1a 05 14 77 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |...w............|
00000220 ff ff ff ff 03 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000230 de ff ff ff 03 00 00 00 3d b2 50 74 67 8f 73 4c |........=.Ptg.sL|
00000240 89 3b a9 eb ee 2f 86 6f 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.;.../.o........|
00000250 80 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 ae 74 b9 e2 00 00 00 00 |.........t......|
00000260 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
00000400 af 3d c6 0f 83 84 72 47 8e 79 3d 69 d8 47 7d e4 |.=....rG.y=i.G}.|
00000410 81 be 5d b4 d7 a4 03 41 9f ec 31 c6 fb 54 e2 f7 |..]....A..1..T..|
00000420 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 ff 47 cb 73 00 00 00 00 |.........G.s....|
00000430 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
*
00001380 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........|
00001388
To Reproduce
- Set up orbstack on macOS
- Use migration assistant to migrate to a new mac
- run
orbon the new machine, runsudo chown -R $USER ~/Library/Group\\ Containers/HUAQ24HBR6.dev.orbstack/dataas requested - run
orbagain, note that it exits withtimed out waiting for services to start - Open orbstack, observe
Stopped unexpectedly: data is emptyerror
Expected behavior
OrbStack should work on the new machine if data.img.raw was migrated successfully
Diagnostic report (REQUIRED)
OrbStack info:
Version: 2.0.5
Commit: cfe47627f138ffd822c958553b0a93eaf2692c71 (v2.0.5)
System info:
macOS: 26.3 (25D2125)
CPU: arm64, 18 cores
CPU model: Apple M5 Max
Model: Mac17,6
Memory: 64 GiB
Full report: https://orbstack.dev/_admin/diag/orbstack-diagreport_2026-03-17T17-26-09.821530Z.zip
Screenshots and additional context (optional)
No response