VMware Player has paused this virtual machine

[kissanej]

Has anyone come across this issue where the Player won't open a VM and keeps popping up a message like the following:

" VMware Player has paused this virtual machine because the disk on which the virtual machine is stored is almost full. To continue, free up at least 111.7 MB of disk space."

The thing is there is plenty of free space available on the partition so I'm not sure what the problem is?

(49) df -h .

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda3 31G 28G 3.2G 90% /windows

Any auggestions are very welcome, thanks!

[a_p_]

For security reasons, VMware doesn't allow VM's to start/run if there is not enough free disk space available. This is a percentage of the partition size.

You can override this with mainMem.freeSpaceCheck = "FALSE" (see http://sanbarrow.com/vmx/vmx-advanced.html#vmx)

Personally, I wouldn't take the risk and rather clean up the disk or move the VM to a larger disk.

André

[continuum]

VMplayer has stopped the VM for good reasons.

Running a VM on a full disk is a sure way to corrupt the vmdk.

_________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

You also find me in the support crew of PHD Virtual Backup

[kissanej]

Thanks for the feedback, I would have thought that 3Gb of free space would be ample given that the partition size is greater than the maximum possible size of the VM but I guess not if it bases the warming on a percentage of the whole partition.

[a_p_]

Don't forget the swap file - which is created in the size of the configured RAM - when a VM is powerd on.

André

[kissanej]

Thanks for the suggestion, what's the swap file called as I couldn't see anything extra in the directory when the VM was running?

[a_p_]

In VMware Workstation it's a file with the extension VMEM.

André

[continuum]

if you do not see a _________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

You also find me in the support crew of PHD Virtual Backup

[kissanej]

I've never changed any parameters for the VM so that one isn't mentioned in the vmx file. With the VM running these are the files I see in the directory:

lnx0023ae8c33b6 (58) ls

caches vmware-2.log Windows XP Professional.vmsd

lost+found vmware.log Windows XP Professional.vmx

tmp Windows XP Professional.nvram Windows XP Professional.vmxf

vmware-0.log Windows XP Professional.vmdk Windows XP Professional.vmx.lck

vmware-1.log Windows XP Professional.vmdk.lck

[a_p_]

Interesting...

Usually the VMEM file is created in the same folder once the VM is started to backup the configured RAM.

The settings to change this behavior are either in the vmx file of the VM itself or in /etc/vmware/config.

Continuum describes theses settings on his web page at http://sanbarrow.com/vmx/vmx-advanced.html#mainmem

You may want to check for the "mainmem.backing" entry.

However, as long as everything works, there's no need to change anything.

André

[continuum]

Andre - if the vmem file is not there while running the VM he must be using a Linux 64bit host - as far as I know then the silent default is

mainmem.backing = "swap"

which does not use a vmem file in the VM-dir




_________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

You also find me in the support crew of PHD Virtual Backup

[kissanej]

Thanks again for the feedback, we are indeed using the VMPlayer on Fedora X86_64. Does this mean the swap file is going elsewhere?

[continuum]

yes - on Linux 64 hosts with default configuration the vmem file will be stored inside the real RAM + swap partition




_________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

You also find me in the support crew of PHD Virtual Backup

[kissanej]

So to summarise then, I need to make sure there's more than 10% free space available in the partition where I'm running the virtual machine from, swap files don't play a part in this calculation due tot he fact that it's a 64-bit Linux host. I'll alter my kickstart script to increase the size of the partition on all future builds to avoid this happening in the future.

Thanks for the feedback.