DevATA_FILETOOBIG : Win XP on Kubuntu

[courrier]

Hi all,
I'm using VB on Kubuntu 6.10. The concerned guest is Windows XP (SP3). For several weeks, when the VM is idle for four or five minutes (and only when it's idle), the VM is paused and I receive the following error message :

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Host system reported that the file size limit has been exceeded. VM execution is suspended. You need to move the file to a filesystem which allows bigger files.

DevATA_FILETOOBIG

Then the VM can't start again, I have to reset it.

That is amazing is that this problem doesn't occur when I use the VM.
I tried to disable screen saver and others energy saving options (like stop the hard disk), but it doesn't work. The file system used by guest is NTFS.

Here there is the result of df -h :

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Sys. de fich.            Tail. Occ. Disp. %Occ. Monté sur
/dev/sda2              15G   11G  3,5G  75% /
varrun                505M  180K  505M   1% /var/run
varlock               505M     0  505M   0% /var/lock
udev                  505M   56K  505M   1% /dev
devshm                505M     0  505M   0% /dev/shm
lrm                   505M   38M  468M   8% /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/volatile
/dev/sda4              82G   16G   66G  19% /media/partage
/dev/sda1              15G   12G  3,1G  79% /media/windows

The .vdi file is stored in a folder of /media/partage

Thanks. And excuse me for my average english

[Sasquatch]

What file system is /media/partage? If it's FAT32, it's possible that that is your problem, as FAT32 allows only files up to 4 GB. Anything at and larger than 4 GB will produce errors such as the above. Use NTFS or Ext2/3 on the partition to allow larger files. It is strange that it only happens when it's idle.

[courrier]

What file system is /media/partage?

eerr ... FAT32 I have not think to that.

/media/partage is the partition I use to share data between Windows and Kubuntu. Do you think I can use NTFS for it ? Will Kubuntu be able to write on it ?

The remaining question is why Windows need to manipulate itself files larger than 4GB (!) when the system is idle ?

In all cases, thank you for your answer !

[TerryE]

If you want to have files bigger that 4Gb then using FAT is going to a bit of a problem.

You say you are sharing this partition between kubuntu and Windows, but how? dual boot, samba share, VBox shared folder? In these last two cases may as well use Ext3. The only problem you've got is converting the partition (USB HDD + cp -a perhaps?)

[Sasquatch]

@TerryE:
If you look at his partitions, you see that one is called Windows, so I assume dual boot .

Best choice is NTFS. The driver for NTFS (ntfs-3g) is stable enough for this work. Only note is to create backups regularly (but that should be done anyway ) and not to defrag the drive you share too much. I defragged my data partition a couple of times and each time the defrag was done and I rebooted, Windows did a disk check and removed a (few) files that it thought were corrupted. This is not a bug in ntfs-3g, but in Windows.

[TerryE]

Is or was?

If it still is then courrier could run still boot from windows and run chkdsk /f C: then reboot and convert C: /FS:NTFS. This will reboot into a pre-Windows conversion utility which converts the FAT32 partition to NTFS. After rebooting you must defrag the partition because convert leaves it in a mess, and as you say, Sasquatch, ntfs3g will happily mount it from Linux or MacOS to serve to the VM.