So, I rarely have to work with OVF files and they're a big pain every time I do and there are probably better ways to do this, but here's what I got to work:
C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool --network="<network you want to connect the VM to>" -ds=<datastore name> "<full path to appliance>" vi://<user>:<password>@<vcenter fqdn>/?ip=<ip of the host you want to initiate the copy to>
One additional thing I had to overcome was that the appliance was set to be hardware level 9 and I needed this in a v4.1 environment ... and the .mf file has checksums on the .ovf and the .vmdk
Special thanks to me already having a XUBUNTU instance going and to Jon Giffard's Blog for the instruction:
"openssl sha1 <filename>
This will give you the sha1 checksum. Now edit the MF file and replace the
old value with your new one.
vSphere will now deploy your appliance without complaining of a checksum
error"
