FYI - Seems that even as of August 2014 VMware still doesn't support VMware Converter standalone Linux conversions of Amazon EC2 instances since Amazon uses specialized volume mounting internally, as indicated by other responses above. I tested using version 5.5.1 build 1682692.
Just to be safe, I recreated the "vmware-sysinfo-lin64.tar.gz" package from Ubuntu 14.04 libraries in the EC2 instance and retested and got the same unsuccessful results below:
The VMware Converter team should really look into supporting Amazon EC2 instances ( or at very least noting it in the RELEASE NOTES ) since Amazon is such a prevalent source of VMware Conversion targets.
Time was wasted attempting to get this working when it could have been easily indicated via UI or documentation.
Best regards
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--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,888 INFO storage ]: Probing for disks using parted
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,888 INFO storage ]: Parted returned device with path: /dev/xvda1, type: 0
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,888 INFO storage ]: Skipping unsupported device with path: /dev/xvda1, type: 0
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,888 ERROR storage ]: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,888 ERROR storage ]: !!! Could not recognize any disks !!!
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,888 ERROR storage ]: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 WARN storage ]: Cannot execute lvm commands, no LVM volume groups or logical volumes will be detected
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: /dev/xvda1, dir: /, type: ext4
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Looking for device with major 202 and minor 1
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: proc, dir: /proc, type: proc
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: sysfs, dir: /sys, type: sysfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: none, dir: /sys/fs/cgroup, type: tmpfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: none, dir: /sys/fs/fuse/connections, type: fusectl
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: none, dir: /sys/kernel/debug, type: debugfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: none, dir: /sys/kernel/security, type: securityfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: udev, dir: /dev, type: devtmpfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: devpts, dir: /dev/pts, type: devpts
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: tmpfs, dir: /run, type: tmpfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: none, dir: /run/lock, type: tmpfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: none, dir: /run/shm, type: tmpfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: none, dir: /run/user, type: tmpfs
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: none, dir: /sys/fs/pstore, type: pstore
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: systemd, dir: /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd, type: cgroup
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Got mount table entry: fsname: /dev/xvda1, dir: /mnt/sda1, type: ext4
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 INFO storage ]: Looking for device with major 202 and minor 1
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 ERROR storage ]: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 ERROR storage ]: !!! Could not recognize any volumes !!!
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 ERROR storage ]: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--> [2014-08-15 19:22:05,889 ERROR storage ]: Cannot find a boot directory (searched for '/boot'); the final system may not be bootable
-->
2014-08-15T15:20:05.230-04:00 [04540 error 'Default'] Sysinfo Query failed with error [Converter Agent SysinfoQuery] the query could not detect proper storage on the source