diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index af20cb46..035f85f6 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,10 +1,13 @@
-livecd-rootfs (2.664.9) focal; urgency=medium
+livecd-rootfs (2.664.9) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
+
+   [ John Chittum]
+   * Backport Ensure toolsVersion set in vmdk header (LP: #1893898) 
 
    [ Dimitri John Ledkov & Joshua Powers ]
    * amd64: always install grub-pc with shim-signed (LP: #1901906), and
      ensure to autoremove packages
 
- -- Joshua Powers <josh.powers@canonical.com>  Fri, 13 Nov 2020 09:08:57 -0800
+ -- Robert C Jennings <robert.jennings@canonical.com>  Fri, 13 Nov 2020 09:08:57 -0800
 
 livecd-rootfs (2.664.8) focal; urgency=medium
 
diff --git a/live-build/functions b/live-build/functions
index 17e42cd7..d69adddd 100644
--- a/live-build/functions
+++ b/live-build/functions
@@ -242,28 +242,46 @@ modify_vmdk_header() {
 
     # Extract the vmdk header for manipulation
     dd if="${vmdk_name}" of="${descriptor}" bs=1 skip=512 count=1024
+    echo "Cat'ing original vmdk disk descriptor to console for debugging."
+    # cat header so we are aware of the original descriptor for debugging
+    cat $descriptor
+
+    # trim null bytes to treat as standard text file
+    tr -d '\000' < $descriptor > $newdescriptor
 
-    # The sed lines below is where the magic is. Specifically:
-    #   ddb.toolsVersion: sets the open-vm-tools so that VMware shows
-    #       the tooling as current
-    #   ddb.virtualHWVersion: set the version to 7, which covers most
-    #       current versions of VMware
-    #   createType: make sure its set to stream Optimized
     #   remove the vmdk-stream-converter comment and replace with
     #       # Disk DescriptorFile. This is needed for Virtualbox
     #   remove the comments from vmdk-stream-converter which causes
     #       VirtualBox and others to fail VMDK validation
-
-    sed -e 's|# Description file.*|# Disk DescriptorFile|' \
+    sed -i -e 's|# Description file.*|# Disk DescriptorFile|' \
         -e '/# Believe this is random*/d' \
         -e '/# Indicates no parent/d' \
         -e '/# The Disk Data Base/d' \
-        -e 's|ddb.comment.*|ddb.toolsVersion = "2147483647"|' \
-            "${descriptor}" > "${newdescriptor}"
+            ${newdescriptor}
+
+    # add newline to newdescriptor
+    echo "" >> $newdescriptor
+
+    # add required tools version
+    echo -n 'ddb.toolsVersion = "2147483647"' >> $newdescriptor
+
+    echo "Cat'ing modified descriptor for debugging."
+    cat $newdescriptor
+
+    # diff original descriptor and new descriptor for debugging
+    # diff exits 1 if difference. pipefail not set so piping diff
+    # to cat prints diff and swallows exit 1
+    echo "Printing diff of original and new descriptors."
+    diff --text $descriptor $newdescriptor | cat
+
+    # The header must be 1024 or less before padding
+    if ! expr $(stat --format=%s ${newdescriptor}) \< 1025 > /dev/null 2>&1; then
+        echo "descriptor is too large, VMDK will be invalid!"; 
+        exit 1
+    fi
 
-    # The header is cannot be bigger than 1024
-    expr $(stat --format=%s ${newdescriptor}) \< 1024 > /dev/null 2>&1 || {
-        echo "descriptor is too large, VMDK will be invalid!"; exit 1; }
+    # reset newdescriptor to be 1024
+    truncate --no-create --size=1K $newdescriptor
 
     # Overwrite the vmdk header with our new, modified one
     dd conv=notrunc,nocreat \