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7 Replies Last post: Nov 5, 2009 3:43 PM by sudarsan  

What is tmpdir used for ? posted: Oct 27, 2009 2:58 PM

Click to view giladb's profile Enthusiast 37 posts since
Mar 21, 2008
One of the configuration items used by VDDK is tmpdir.

As far as I could tell, this is where logs are written, assuming log function pointers are NOT provided to initialization functions.

If these pointers are provided, what is this directory used for ?

Re: What is tmpdir used for ?

1. Nov 4, 2009 1:57 AM in response to: giladb
Click to view rahqa's profile Enthusiast 39 posts since
Jul 14, 2009
the tmpdir which usually falls in C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Temp\vmware-<user> where you will find other generic VMware logs getting saved (ex : virtual center related). For VDDK (as per the documentation) this parameter has to be explicitly specified under the configfile as below :

. tmpDirectory = "<TempDirectoryForLogging>"
. vixDiskLib.transport.LogLevel = "<logLevel>" (the default <logLevel> is 6)
. vixDiskLib.nfc.RequestTimeoutMs = "<NfcRequestTimeoutInMilliseconds>"
. vixDiskLib.nfc.ReadTimeoutMs = "<NfcReadTimeoutInMilliseconds>"
. vixDiskLib.nfc.WriteTimeoutMs = "<NfcWriteTimeoutInMilliseconds>"

A definition (location) of the config file is not mentioned in the guide, so my assumption is you would need to manually create one and point to the same on your code. but i am again not very sure.

Re: What is tmpdir used for ?

3. Nov 4, 2009 8:02 PM in response to: giladb
Click to view rahqa's profile Enthusiast 39 posts since
Jul 14, 2009
Sorry, if i'd missed that. But as i said before, there isn't a pre-defined thing within VDDK code that asks the logging to be happening in the tmpdir. Thats defined when you provide the init() statement, right? (by specifying the config file parameter)
So, if you have provided your own log functions, then by default, the only logs you may expect to find in the temp dir are the regular VMware logs / VC logs etc. Again thats what i am assuming looking at the guide, i agree there isn't a complete explanation on this given. But when i look into the location of the temp folder i do see logs with name vmware-<user>.log, which are mostly VC related logs. Is that the case?

Re: What is tmpdir used for ?

5. Nov 5, 2009 10:16 AM in response to: giladb
Click to view sudarsan's profile Expert 263 posts since
Sep 20, 2006
tmpdir is used for creating redo logs and to create temporary registry hives in some cases. VMware programs might also create additional files for internal purposes, but usually these are cleaned up (.

It is difficult to predict what space should be reserved for this (it would depend on how big the system or software hive is for example) - but I have never seen a software hive that is > 100MB, so may be that is a good starting point.

You should be able to delete these files as part of startup before initializing vixDiskLib.

Hope that helps,
Sudarsan

Re: What is tmpdir used for ?

7. Nov 5, 2009 3:43 PM in response to: giladb
Click to view sudarsan's profile Expert 263 posts since
Sep 20, 2006
You won't see these files on Linux. Perhaps rather than X days, an upper limit may be more apt ?

On Linux, this directory is used to create partition mount points. Of course, you should not delete them while stuff is mounted.

Thanks
Sudarsan

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