VMware Communities
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Shared Folder Issue in Fusion 5

I am experiencing a shared folder issue on 2 of my mac's running Fusion 5.01/5.02.  This does not occur in Fusion 4.1.4.

When navigating through shared folders using File Explorer the VM will intermittently freeze for 10 to 60 seconds then un-freeze and continue to run normally.  This occurs in both Windows 7 and Windows 8 VM's.

During the freeze, all VM activity stops, the mouse will change to the “spinning beach ball”.  If I am using RDP to access one of these VM’s, the RDP session will break.

Is anyone else seeing this behavior?

Reply
0 Kudos
70 Replies
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Attached is the diagnostic info from right after one of the freeze episodes...

Reply
0 Kudos
steve_goddard
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi there,

I am the main developer for this feature on Workstation and Fusion.

I have to say my first thought was the AV type of issue where we have had problems in the past.

Although I have fixed those that I know about and have not seen new ones.

I would like to try and reproduce this issue or at least narrow this down.

My other thought, that I have seen in the past, is that somehow, the file IO made from our Shared Folders server component

is getting blocked which can cause the VM to freeze like you are seeing. This has occured when people have mapped

a host path to a network share on the host desktop and that is a particularly slow remote server. Or inadvertently, mapped lots

of shares that are network paths on the host desktop. However, you maybe running into something blocking the file IO on one of your locations on

your shares.

First suggestion, I see from the vmx file that you have Documents and Downloads mirred and your

SATA RAID mounted drive as your only other share.

First, if possible, can you just disable the SATA RAID share, so that you are only using the two

mirrored shares. These both reside on the same volume under your /Users/Gary folder.

I wonder then if you still see the same hangs when navigating those shares.

Secondly, you can also try to disable both the mirrored shares and just have the SATA RAID share.

Do you see the same internittent hangs?

If you only see intermittent hangs with one drive then there maybe an issue. It would be good to know.

If it is consistently only with one share, like your SATA, then maybe trying sharing only part of the host volume.

E.g. pick some deeper sub-folder and not the higher level  folder.

Another thought that might show something is that maybe when you navigate the VM Shared Folders share and

can see the freeze, have a terminal window open and run fs_usage command line tool to see what file IO is going

on. Do a "man fs_usage" and typically you can select the options of -f filesys and the PID of the vmware-vmx process to see what the Shared

Folders server component is doing. (run "ps aux |grep vmware-vmx" in your terminal window to find the PID).

This might show you if some file IO is actually blocking or that for some reason none is being issued and the the server component

is being blocked from executing by something else.

If this isn't clear or you need more details, you can always send me a private message too.

Thanks. Steve
Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Steve,

Thanks for the detailed response.

I did experience the shared folder freezing issue with Fusion 3 when using Avast! AV.  Just for the record, there is no AV software running inside of the VM's where I am currently experiencing this issue.  I am seeing the issue on both my 2008 Mac Pro and my 2011 mac mini, both running 10.8.2.

Just to recap…I performed a clean install of OSX 10.8.2 environment on my Mac Pro in an attempt to track down this issue.  Next, I installed Fusion 5.02…and no other applications.  Also, there are no other mapped drives, etc., being defined inside the VM.

I will try your suggestion of using only the mirrored Documents and Downloads folder and see what happens.

I will also try the Terminal command that you provided and see what other details I can provide.

Thanks again for your help on this.

GKG

Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I did some additioal testing with the standard mirrored folders Documents and Downloads.  No other mapped folders were used.

The freeze occurred just before I captured the attached diagnostic info. 

The freeze normaly occurs when navigating in the Windows 8 File Explorer.  99% of the time, it happens when navigating back-up the directory tree to the shared folder's "root" level.  The File Explorer's window will suddenly freeze...the mouse becomes frozen...then turns into the spinning beach ball.

The freeze in this case lasted nearly 60 seconds.

I will try to setup the fs_usage and report back the findings.

Thanks again...

Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Steve,

Ok...I have attached a compressed file with the output from the fs_usage command that you suggested.  I captured only the vmware-vmx process.

At 7:52....the VM freeze occured again.  There are literally hundreds of entries per second in the fs_usage log, however.  I am not sure that this will tell you much.

Please let me know if there are addional steps that I can take.

Thanks again.

GKG

Reply
0 Kudos
steve_goddard
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Ok - thanks very much for the debugging information.

One quick question, to help me digest the logging, what Shared Folder were you navigating when the freeze occured?
(Just so I have some context on what I might expect to see and check for.)

Also this was from your Windows 8 VM and with only the mirrored folders enabled too, right?

Thanks. Steve
Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

When the freeze occurred, I was navigating back up the directory tree from Documents...

The mirrored folders were Documents and Downloads in my user account.

It was a Windows 8 VM...and only those folders were shared...no other SMB shares, etc., were defined.

Thanks again for your time...

GKG

Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Greetings Steve,

Just wondering if there is any update on this...

Thanks,

Dr G

Reply
0 Kudos
steve_goddard
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Sorry, nothing as yet. Been out of the office, Thanksgiving vacation. Smiley Happy

Although I have been looking through the log, not found much so far.

Thanks. Steve
Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

No problem...thanks for the update.

Happy Thanksgiving...

Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Steve,

Attached is another diagnostic report from my other mac, a 2011 mac mini, that is expereincing the exact same freeze condition as my mac Pro.

The freeze on the mini occurred at 9:08 on 11/22.

Thanks,

Dr G

Reply
0 Kudos
steve_goddard
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi there,

It seems like one possibility is that you maybe getting a flood of file system change events occur.

So I would like to rule that out or determine if that is the issue.

Please edit the Windows VM vmx file, e.g. Windows 8 x64.vmx from your Mac Mini.

Either (I don't see it in the file version I have from you) modify the existing setting to FALSE or add the complete new line below:

isolation.tools.hgfs.notify.enable = "FALSE"

Before you add the above line and restart Fusion, try running the Activity Monitor utility on your Mac and watch for any processes hogging the CPU when the freeze occurs. Notably, others have run into issues where the Dock process hits 100% CPU. You might be running into this but again, it would be good to rule it in or out.

Now after saving the changes in the above file, restart Fusion and the Windows VM.

It seems like one of the issues is that you can get this flood of activity generated by some Explorer reading lots of directories or another process on the Mac side is monitoring and generating some file system activity.

If the freezes still occur then we know that it is not the file system events updating and the issue.

If the freezes still occur then please update again with the new logs and I will verify if there is anything of note going on.

Thanks. Steve
Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Steve,

Thanks for the update on this issue.

In answer to your one question…I have looked at Activity Monitor during several of these freeze interruptions, but have not observed any processes using inordinate amounts of CPU.

I went ahead and added the isolation.tools.hgfs.notify.enable = "FALSE" parameter to the vmx file then restarted the mac mini.  I then attempted to recreate the freeze condition; however, so far, I have not observed it.  I must admit I have not tested it thoroughly enough yet to call it fixed…I will continue to do so and update the thread with my results…but it sure appears to be very promising at this point.Smiley Happy

What exactly are the ramifications of adding this parameter?

Thanks again for your time on this issue.  I will continue testing on my mac mini and if no issues occur update my mac pro with the same parameter and test there as well.

Once again…your information is much appreciated.

Dr G

Reply
0 Kudos
ElysianLabs
Contributor
Contributor

I'm also experiencing a problem simliar to this, navigating shared folders, system freezing. In this case the shared folders are also (T)SVN folders, so there is a lot of file system access updating icon overlays. This is on a new 13" i7 MacBook Air, OS X 10.8.2, Fusion 5.0.2, Windows 7.

If the problem happens again, I'll follow your procedure to see if that helps.

Reply
0 Kudos
steve_goddard
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi there,

Sorry, I should have mentioned the ramifications. You will lose the automatic updates in the Windows applications of file system changes in the shared folders when changes to their contents occur from the OS X side.

The file system change events mean that certain applications in Windows will automatically update as they watch for certain changes in folders.

Explorer is one such Windows application. This means that if you have an Explorer Window open to one of your shares then any changes to that folder by any application, even from OS X Finder, will automatically be updated in the Explorer Window. No need to hit F5 to refresh.

This is useful and some applications rely on it heavily, like Media Player, which use it to automatically update its library if you add media content to folders that it is watching in its library.

I am using this feature constantly but have not seen freezes such that you are running in to. Frustratingly for me. It looks like I will have to modify the code that parses file system events from the OS X file system in our server component watching the Mac folders and throttle back when we get a run to prevent these updates from stopping other activity from occuring.

It is good to know that other processes are not getting stuck hogging the CPU as others have run in to. I hope that issue is fixed.

Thanks. Steve
Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Steve,

Over the past few hours...I have had a chance to thoroughly test both my mac mini and my mac pro with the isolation.tools.hgfs.notify.enable = "FALSE" VMX modification....and the problem has indeed been eliminated.

From your explanation of what this modification actually does...I'm not quite sure how this will affect my applications.  I am using Windows 8 on the mac mini for some rather intense Windows batch processes…as such; I don’t believe the impact on this machine will be much, if anything.  The mac pro may be affected more, however. I think I will roll-back my mac pro to 4.1.4 and leave the mac mini at 5.02.

I also find it strange that this is not being reported by other users of version 5.  I would think that the shared folders option is used by many folks.  It also strikes me as odd that this issue does not occur at all in version 4.  Has the logic for this file system event changed that much between version 4 and version 5?

Once again, thanks for the information and the workaround.  I would like to be kept in the loop on this issue if possible.  I would be more than willing to test any fixes, etc., that you may come up with.

Thanks again.

Dr G 

Reply
0 Kudos
steve_goddard
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi Dr G

The code has changed significantly between Fusion 4 and 5, cleaned up alot but not changed from an overall design or algorithm point of view. As I intimated in an earlier posting alot of users were running into an issue that caused the other processes like the Dock process to get stuck in loops hogging all the CPU. That rendered the machine pretty useless and unusable at that point.

However, I think you are definitely running into another issue, which should have been there before.It could be a result of fixing other issues where maybe events got dropped and we caused other processes to get stuck reading the file event changes. I am not sure why others don't see this issue, and it is probably the same reason that I have not run into it myself. As I also earlier stated, frustratingly for me, I use and test this feature all the time many hours each day, and with multiple different Windows versions and have not managed to hit it either.

So I am not sure what else is going on in your environment that is not in mine. My OS X machine is running OS X 10.7.5 not 10.8.2. Apple have definitely changed their OS code and their applications in these areas. So it could easily be some combination of that.

I might try and get my desktop upgraded to OS X 10.8.2 now. However, I will probably still not run into this but I will keep trying.

Do you have anything else in particular installed on your OS X boxes? For your work or otherwise that is particular to your environment?

One other thing to try if you have the time to generate more freezes would be to monitor the file IO from the Windows VM side?

There is a very useful free download called Process Monitor from www.sysinternals.com.

It is a great utility and if look under the File and Disk utilities and scroll down to Process Monitor.

It is useful to run it as Administrator if you are not already running as that account. Then select Filter menu and Filter option.

It will bring up a dialog box. Create a new filter which has

column: Path

relation: contains

value: vmware-host

action: include

Then add it and hit ok.

When you enable capturing events (Crtl+E) or the File menu Capture option.

Try to go through the Windows Explorer and generate freezes. It will block and continue I hope after the freeze.

You can then disable the capture and save the logged output as a file. You can then upload it here.

It might not tell us anything if the VM has totally frozen but it might show what activity is actually going on from the VM to the OS X side.

What also might be worthwhile is noting if it is accessing a particular folder or just random or if you can disable other OS X applications e.g. time machine which might run at specified intervals and cause file system events as you are using Explorer.

There could be other applications that troll specific folders and cause updates too. Just something to think about.

I appreciate your help in trying to reproduce this and track down the underlying cause.

Thanks. Steve
Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Steve,

In answer to your question about other applications, etc., which may be unique to these systems…the answer would have to be no.  In fact, in an attempt to isolate this issue, I created a new disk partition and performed a clean install of OSX 10.8.2 on my mac pro…then proceeded to install Fusion 5.02 only…no other applications at all…and ran into the same freeze issue. 

The mac mini is the nearly the same…I have only one other application installed there…a backup/de-duplication application…but this is run only in the foreground and was never active during a freeze incident.  I also have Time Machine disabled on both of these mac’s.

As a developer for more than 20 years…I am very familiar with many of the utilities from the sysinternals suite…I use Process Explorer almost every day.  I will set a filter as you detailed…and see what I can come up with.

This freeze issue occurs when simply navigating through the shared folder hierarchy using File Explorer, as it is now dubbed in Windows 8.  I will often drill-down several levels in a folder tree…then, use the File Explorer’s “back” button to move back up the tree…this is usually when a freeze occurs, i.e., when moving back up the folder tree.  Although, I have also experienced the issue when simply attempting to “X”-out of the File Explorer’s active window.

This freeze never occurs when traversing a folder tree with File Explorer on a Fusion virtual disk or an SMB share.

I will update the thread with my Process Explorer info.

Thanks again.

Dr G

Reply
0 Kudos
Dr_Gary
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Steve,

Attached are the captured events from Process Monitor as your requested. The file is in the standard Process Monitor format.

I first changed the added VMX parameter to isolation.tools.hgfs.notify.enable = "TRUE" to reenable this function on my mac mini.  Then, while using Explorer to traverse through some of my shared folders, a freeze occurred at or around 9:42:40.

Lots of entries in the log around that time...I'm not sure if this will help you or not.

Thanks,

GKG

Reply
0 Kudos