WS 15.5 player: endless 'critically low on free space' loop

[frontstreet061]

Hey everyone! First time poster here.

Does anyone know the line (or lines) of script to add to the Workstation 15.5 .vmx file to avoid this annoying error message:

The file system upon which ('...') resides is critically low on free space. Allowing this virtual machine to continue may cause it to fail unexpectedly.

VMware Player has paused this virtual machine because the disk on which the virtual machine is stored is almost full. To continue, free an additional (nth) of disk space.

Background Info: 15.5gb ram, 112.7gb disk (22.2gb free), Ubuntu 18.04

I'm trying to run Workstation in order to work with Cisco VIRL... Everything was working as normal until I downloaded a 1.3 gb device image to my local UWM server.. From that point forward, Workstation has paused, and put me in this seemingly-infinite 'add more memory' error state.

Can anyone help or advise me? Getting workstation to work with VIRL has been very frustrating so far... I'm happy to supply more info, I don't really know what I'm doing (or not doing) wrong here.

Cheers!

My .VMX file:

config.version = "8"

virtualHW.version = "16"

mks.enable3d = "TRUE"

pciBridge0.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge4.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge4.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"

pciBridge4.functions = "8"

pciBridge5.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge5.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"

pciBridge5.functions = "8"

pciBridge6.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge6.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"

pciBridge6.functions = "8"

pciBridge7.present = "TRUE"

pciBridge7.virtualDev = "pcieRootPort"

pciBridge7.functions = "8"

vmci0.present = "TRUE"

hpet0.present = "TRUE"

displayName = "Ubuntu 64-bit (2)"

guestOS = "ubuntu-64"

nvram = "Ubuntu 64-bit (2).nvram"

virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"

gui.exitOnCLIHLT = "FALSE"

powerType.powerOff = "soft"

powerType.powerOn = "soft"

powerType.suspend = "soft"

powerType.reset = "soft"

usb.vbluetooth.startConnected = "TRUE"

tools.syncTime = "FALSE"

sound.autoDetect = "TRUE"

sound.fileName = "-1"

sound.present = "TRUE"

vcpu.hotadd = "TRUE"

memsize = "4086"

mem.hotadd = "TRUE"

scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"

scsi0.present = "TRUE"

sata0.present = "TRUE"

scsi0:0.fileName = "Ubuntu 64-bit (2).vmdk"

scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"

sata0:1.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

sata0:1.fileName = ".../iso/ubuntu-18.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso"

sata0:1.present = "TRUE"

sata0:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

sata0:0.fileName = "autoinst.iso"

sata0:0.present = "TRUE"

usb.present = "TRUE"

ehci.present = "TRUE"

svga.graphicsMemoryKB = "786432"

ethernet0.connectionType = "nat"

ethernet0.addressType = "generated"

ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

serial0.fileType = "thinprint"

serial0.fileName = "thinprint"

floppy0.fileType = "file"

floppy0.fileName = "autoinst.flp"

ethernet0.present = "TRUE"

serial0.present = "TRUE"

extendedConfigFile = "Ubuntu 64-bit (2).vmxf"

floppy0.clientDevice = "FALSE"

smc.version = 0

[scott28tt]

Moderator: Moved to Workstation Player

[RDPetruska]

So how much free space do you have on your host's hard disk?

Is the virtual machine's virtual hard drive split into chunks, or one monolithic piece?

[frontstreet061]

Hey thanks for the quick response.

On this virtual machine, I have 18.9gb used and 16.3 gb system free. I believe that my vhdd is one monolithic piece, but I have not confirmed this.

[frontstreet061]

I've confirmed that disk space has not been preallocated, everything is stored as a single piece.

[RDPetruska]

That makes things tougher - for any disk activities (cleanup, expand, defrag, etc), you need at least as much free space on your host as the defined max size of your virtual disk, plus some small overhead.  With the split disk, you only need the size of one chunk plus some small overhead.

How much free space on your host, on the disk which contains the virtual machine?

[frontstreet061]

Hey, thanks for reaching out again!

Oh wow in that case I'm definitely going to need a bigger hard drive for my laptop. The maximum capacity for this VM is said to be 68.4 GB.

On my physical hard drive there's 112GB of total space. My host (or my 'home' file system) consumes 73 GB, with vmware consuming 27.7 GB of space within this file system. I have 23.2 GB of total free space on my physical machine.

"With the split disk, you only need the size of one chunk plus some small overhead"

In this case, how do i go about splitting my vhdd?

Thank you for the support.

[frontstreet061]

To answer your question directly: I only have 16.3 gb free on this VM disk. :^/

[RDPetruska · Accepted solution]

In this case, how do i go about splitting my vhdd?

You can use the vmware-vdiskmanager to change the disk type.  However, you are going to need as much free disk space as your VM is allocated in order to do the disk copy part of the operation.

If you have snapshots, or auto-protect turned on, that will certainly cause issues here, as you won't have enough free space to perform those actions.  Which would be one reason for the warning message to pop up.