I want to run an Ubuntu cloud image on on VMWare.

I've gotten pretty far but want to know how to set the OVF properties in a way that VMWare understands in order to pass parameters to cloud-init.

This is what I've done:

1. Install VMWare Player 4.0.4, using the vmware workstation 8.0.2 / player 4.0.2 fix for linux 3.2+ patch to get around the compilation failure for virtual ethernet module.
2. Download precise-server-cloudimg-amd64.ovf, and also the QCOW2 .img file (220MB)
3. Run qemu-img convert -O vmdk precise-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img precise-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.vmdk to convert the image from QCOW2 to VMDK
4. Edit the OVF to change the extension and ovf:size on the <File> element and set ovf:format="http://www.vmware.com/interfaces/specifications/vmdk.html#sparse" on the <Disk> element.
5. Edit the OVF to remove all the <Property> elements because vmplayer was complaining about unrecognised elements.
6. Run the OVF in vmplayer. Alternatively, run ovftool to convert to vmx and run the vmx.

Unfortunately I can't log in as "ubuntu" at the prompt because the OVF properties haven't been provided to cloud-init. How should I do this?