diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index ef43e34..9d66b62 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -5,3 +5,4 @@ rootfs_overlay_demo/*
 mender_local_config
 *.xml
 *.html
+convert.log
diff --git a/mender-convert b/mender-convert
index b434cee..9eccc56 100755
--- a/mender-convert
+++ b/mender-convert
@@ -18,6 +18,9 @@ source modules/bootstrap.sh
 source modules/cliparser.sh
 source modules/decompressinput.sh
 
+mkdir -p work
+touch work/convert.log
+
 ###############################################################################
 #                Declaration of important variables for this file             #
 ###############################################################################
@@ -26,11 +29,11 @@ declare compression_type=""   # Detected input file compression, also applied to
 declare ocfile="./work/override_compression_config"
 declare disk_image=""         # Needed in parse_cli_options, and is passed to decompress_image()
 declare -a overlays=()        # [Dummy] Needed in parse_cli_options, not here
-declare -a configs=()        # [Dummy] Needed in parse_cli_options, not here
+declare -a configs=()         # [Dummy] Needed in parse_cli_options, not here
+MENDER_ARTIFACT_NAME="${MENDER_ARTIFACT_NAME:-}"     # Required env variable
+MENDER_CONVERT_VERSION="${MENDER_CONVERT_VERSION:-}" # Required env variable
 ###############################################################################
 
-MENDER_CONVERT_VERSION=$(git describe --tags --dirty --exact-match 2>/dev/null || git rev-parse --short HEAD)
-
 function show_help() {
   cat << EOF
 mender-convert
@@ -113,8 +116,6 @@ if [ -z "${MENDER_ARTIFACT_NAME}" ]; then
   echo -e "\tMENDER_ARTIFACT_NAME=\"release-1\" ./mender-convert"
   exit 1
 fi
-mkdir -p work
-touch work/convert.log
 
 parse_cli_options "$@"
 
diff --git a/modules/decompressinput.sh b/modules/decompressinput.sh
index 9cb155e..b11ba2f 100644
--- a/modules/decompressinput.sh
+++ b/modules/decompressinput.sh
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ function decompress_image () {
       xzcat "${input_image}" > "${disk_image}"
       ;;
     * )
-      log_fatal "Unsupported input image type: ${input_image}"
+      log_fatal "Unsupported input image format: ${input_image}. We support: '.img', '.gz', '.zip', '.xz'."
       ;;
   esac
   echo "${disk_image}"