Snapshot Failure

[clivekay]

Just moved over from parallels. All seem fine except cannot do a snapshot as it say s, Cannot save the file :"" Reached the Host's limit of open files...What do I need to do ....imac 10.4 and 3 gig ram ????? Ca I now uninstall P's and it relevant files or hold on for a bit ???

Clive R Kay

[admin]

OS X, like other *nixes (and I assume all other OSes) has a limit on how many files you can have open at once. Both split disks and snapshots make this problem worse, since either option increases the number of files you need to have open. It is surprising you managed to hit this limit, though - what else were you doing at the time? How big is the virtual disk? Does the problem go away if you restart OS X?

[TeeClemson]

I have encountered the same issue on an XP Pro machine converted from a standalone system. I had created one Snapshot successfully, however when creating a subsequent Snapshot I receive the message referenced above.

A more significant problem appears after you close the error message, Fusion insists on powering down the VM and fails because it can't locate the previous Snapshot file. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[ao1279a15b6]

I've had this happen twice on VMware Fusion and it's a real pain.

I'm using Fusion on a Macbook Pro, 2GB memory, OS X 1.4.10 with the latest patches. My understanding is that OS X can handle a very large number of open files so I wonder if something else is going wrong here.

I'm running the VMware image of our company's product (some software that's bundled with a Linux image). On a couple of occasions, attempting to save a snapshot has resulted in the message "Reached the host's limit for open files" and the snapshot fails. Worse, this seems to hose the complete VM - when I next try to restart it, I get the message that the file I am clicking on to start the virtual machine "Other Linux 2.6.x kernel.vmsd" does not exist - yet clearly it does exist as I am opening it!

What seems to be happening is that the snapshot is being currupted then won't reopen.

Here's the log at the point at which things go wrong:

Oct 03 13:11:28.392: vmx| AIOGNRC: Failed to open './Foundation_7.0_BETA1_VM-cl1-000001-s006.vmdk' : Too many open files (6146) (0x3).

Oct 03 13:11:28.392: vmx| DISKLIB-SPARSE: "./Foundation_7.0_BETA1_VM-cl1-000001-s006.vmdk" : failed to open (42): AIOMgr_Open failed

Oct 03 13:11:28.392: vmx| DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Failed to open extents for descriptor file in normal mode

Oct 03 13:11:28.393: vmx| DISKLIB-LINK : "Foundation_7.0_BETA1_VM-cl1-000001.vmdk" : failed to open (Reached the host's limit for open files).

Oct 03 13:11:28.393: vmx| DISKLIB-CHAIN : "Foundation_7.0_BETA1_VM-cl1-000001.vmdk" : failed to open (Reached the host's limit for open files).

Oct 03 13:11:28.393: vmx| DISKLIB-LIB : Failed to open 'Foundation_7.0_BETA1_VM-cl1-000001.vmdk' with flags 0x1a (Reached the host's limit for open files).

Oct 03 13:11:28.393: vmx| DISK: Cannot open disk "Foundation_7.0_BETA1_VM-cl1-000001.vmdk": Reached the host's limit for open files (42).

Oct 03 13:11:28.393: vmx| DISK: Cannot open disk 'Foundation_7.0_BETA1_VM-cl1-000001.vmdk' : Reached the host's limit for open files.

Oct 03 13:11:28.394: vmx| Msg_Post: Error

Oct 03 13:11:28.394: vmx| http://msg.disk.noBackEnd Cannot open the disk '/Users/a.ormsby/Hyperion Alpha demo/Foundation_7.0_BETA1_VM-cl1-000002.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Oct 03 13:11:28.394: vmx| http://msg.disk.configureDiskError Reason: Reached the host's limit for open files.----

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[TeeClemson]

The application referened here

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=674493&# provides a

graphical front end to a VMware utility that can combine the multiple drive

image files into one file. After doing this I had no further Snapshot

problems.

Good Luck!

[admin]

OS X can support a large number of files, but the default is something small (around 256 per process, IIRC). The developers are aware that some people have larger-than-expected snapshots or disks. In the meantime, you can recombine the snapshots or unsplit the disks.

[ao1279a15b6]

So presumably the alternative fix would be to increase the number of available file descriptors in OS X. Does anyone happen to know how I can change the limit? A brief look on the Apple support site has not turned anything up.

[Rzn8tor]

See OSX Open File Limit? for how to change the limit.