topic Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ? in Operating System - Linux

vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 19:36:13 GMT

Operation on file '/var/lib/vmware/VirtualMachines/VL5.8/VL5.8.vmdk" failed (no space left on device) the file system where disk /var/lib/vmware/VirtualMachines/VL5.8/VL5.8.vmdk" resides is FULL. Choose retry to attempt the operation again.. Choose abort to terminate the session.

the details of my VL setup in VM is

Memory 256mb
Harddisk IDE 0:0 (80.0G)
CDROM IDE 1:0 /dev/cdrom
Mouse : ps/2
floppy : /dev/fd0
ethernet : Bridged
Processors : 1

any suggestions? thanks

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Rob Leadbeater — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:27:19 GMT

Hi,

It would appear that your /var partition is full. What does the output of

"df -h" show you ?

You might also want to post which VMware product you're using and what version.

Cheers,

Rob

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Ivan Ferreira — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 04:35:27 GMT

That message indicates that the /var is full. You need more space in /var or reduce the size of your virtual disk.

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:45:26 GMT

yes i know.. but isn't that its only a "virtual memory" so im thinking.. why would it be full IF i am just installing a distro on a virtual space disk? as far as i could remember ...

me@darkstar:/var/lib/vmware/VirtualMachines/VL5.8$ ls
VL5.8.vmdk VL5.8.vmsd VL5.8.vmx* nvram vmware.log

the ".vmdk" consumes the space since it has the biggest size.. (just forgot to include the "-l" option...

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Rob Leadbeater — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 01:51:54 GMT

Hi,

If I remember correctly the vmdk files are the virtual hard disks. So if you created a VM with a 10GB hard disk, you'd get a 10GB vmdk file...

Cheers,

Rob

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:21:49 GMT

hmm okay . . so wat should i do? :( should i lessen the VM disk space? -----just to install the guest linux OS?

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

TY 007 — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:28:32 GMT

Hello ICE,

>> Harddisk IDE 0:0 (80.0G)
>> so wat should i do? :(
>> should i lessen the VM disk space?

IDE Hard Disk? Value Buy - 160GB, 250GB, 320GB if the machine supports.

Thanks

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Rob Leadbeater — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:29:14 GMT

According to your original post, you've got 80GB of disk space, so that should be more than enough for a few Virtual Machines.

What you probably need to do is store your VM files in a different file system.

If you want more information, give the details requested previously...

Cheers,

Rob

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:48:47 GMT

the details of my VL setup in VM is

Memory 256mb
Harddisk IDE 0:0 (80.0G)
CDROM IDE 1:0 /dev/cdrom
Mouse : ps/2
floppy : /dev/fd0
ethernet : Bridged
Processors : 1

The Hdisk space of 80G is ONLY the "Virtual Hdisk space" do you mean.. i will try to set the VM disk in a smaller size? lets say 15-20G only? --sorry a bit confused here ---

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Rob Leadbeater — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:14:39 GMT

OK. I think I'm getting myself (and you) confused !

What is the physical setup ?
Which VMware product are you using ?
What version of that product are you using ?

Cheers,

Rob

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:29:25 GMT

ok . . the MAIN distro being used is Slackware12.0 -- and it has a TOTAL space of 20G (because my entire HD is 80G and is partitioned for different distros )

the Vmware version was downloaded from

http://www.vmware.com/download/server/

and the version is:

VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.tar.gz

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Rob Leadbeater — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:39:52 GMT

OK. So you're using VMware Server 1.0.3, however I'm still not clear on the physical setup...

When you log on to the physical machine (running Slackware ...?) what do you see when you issue the command "df -h" ?

Cheers,

Rob

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 03:47:21 GMT

ok il update this post ASAP. .. il check it when i come home. . thanks for the replies :)

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Ivan Ferreira — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:32:40 GMT

Your best option is to create a virtual disk with a size "lower" than the free space of the partition that will hold the virtual disk file.

Also, uncheck "allocate all space now".

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 07:06:03 GMT

icey@darkstar:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc5 1.9G 489M 1.4G 26% /
/dev/hdc6 93M 22M 66M 25% /boot
/dev/hdc8 954M 36M 919M 4% /tmp
/dev/hdc9 954M 57M 898M 6% /var
/dev/hdc10 4.7G 3.3G 1.5G 70% /usr
/dev/hdc11 9.4G 514M 8.9G 6% /home
/dev/hda1 19G 14G 5.1G 74% /mnt/windows
/dev/hda5 20G 12G 8.0G 60% /mnt/winback

cd /usr/lib/vmware :

ls -l (disregarded the small files)

-r--r--r-- 1 root root 1067841 2007-08-19 12:51 vix-perl.tar.gz

so i think this file causes (the process of installing the guest OS to be full? ) i mean even if im not starting the guest os install yet.. my /var is already at 70%...and the file is already a gig in size...? hmm any ideas IF i can rm this file?

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:24:27 GMT

CORRECTION. . . i made a mistake on my last post.. the df output is correct BUT i typed the wrong fs in my message.. the 70%% is /usr and NOT /var. .

just moved the tar.gz file in my /mnt/winback

and i am now testing the guest os install IF it will result in the same OUTPUT... il update this post at once. .. thanks

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Rob Leadbeater — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:19:36 GMT

Hi,

You seem to be confusing things...

The file you've just moved is only 1067841 bytes in size - just over 1MB. That's not the cause of /var filling up...

Looking back at your original problem, we can see that your virtual machines files are being stored under /var However that file system is only 954MB in size, which will quickly get used up when creating VMs.

/var/lib/vmware/VirtualMachines appears to be the default area for storing virtual machine files on VMware Server. As /var is so small, you will probably want to move that data store somewhere else.

Refer to the admin guide (page 123) here:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/server_admin_manual.pdf

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Marcel Burggraeve — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:09:23 GMT

Looks like there's some confusion here.
Even though the disk of your guest OS is virtual the requested diskspace needs to be allocated by the host OS.
When you create a guest environment with a disk of let's say 30GB a 'containerfile' with the size of 30GB will be created.
Inside this 'containerfile' you will have your guest OS.
This 'containerfile' is the .vmdk file you mentioned earlier.
There's no such thing as compression as such so a guest OS of xGB will take xGB of diskspace.

The only solution might be to do like Ivan suggested, uncheck allocate all space now.
However, I have no clue what kind of problems you run into if you do this and the disk goes to 100%

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

icedT — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:01:40 GMT

actually i always "UNCHECK" the radio button allocate disk space. . whenever i create the Virtual disk.. i will update this post as soon as i have the time to install again the guest OS.. and try TO install it in another location which is bigger in space compared to /var as what Rob said (through the link he gave)

:)

Re: vmware directory for installing guest OS is Full? ?

Rob Leadbeater — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 02:18:49 GMT

Hi,

Another thing to bear in mind when deciding where to put your virtual machine files, is the amount of virtual memory (RAM) that you assign.

Assuming the VMware Server works in a similar fashion to ESX Server then you get a file on the system which is the size of the memory you allocated.

So for example if you created a VM with 128MB RAM, and 4GB Disk space, then you'll need at least 4224MB free in the file system hosting your virtual machines.

Cheers,

Rob

P.S. Remember to assign points if people have helped you out...

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