[SOLVED - partly] folder sharing file errors on ext3 host

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tsr
Posts: 5
Joined: 8. Aug 2008, 02:29

[SOLVED - partly] folder sharing file errors on ext3 host

Post by tsr »

Hi :)

I'm having a weird problem. Every once in a while my guest creates files with a false size. By that I mean that - for example - a file which should be 700M becomes 3G. The files grow by having appended the null character when I look at them. But they don't seem to really have the full size that is displayed (i.e. they dont actually occupy the additional diskspace).
The problem occurs with bit torrent downloads as they are written to disk (into a shared folder on the host). And usually this happens after the guest has been running for a while, but I that is just a gut feeling.

My setup looks like this:
The guest has a small virtual disk and runs on Ubuntu 7.10. It writes bit torrent downloads into a shared folder on the host, because there is no space for downloads in the guest (I'm only mentioning this so that you get a picture on what I am actually doing).
The host system has an ext3 file system and runs on Ubuntu 7.10 as well.
The Virtualbox Version is 1.6.4, but the problem has been existing since at least the previous version.
The fstab line that mounts the shared folder looks like this

Code: Select all

fls 		/media/files	vboxsf  rw,uid=user  0   0
Additionally I am experiencing file access errors while the bit torrent client is trying to write chunks into a file located in the shared folder. This only happens after the guest has been running for some time (and has had a lot of i/o in the shared folder). Unfortunately I don't currently have any more debug information on what type of file i/o errors there actually occur, because it takes about 2-4 days to reproduce the scenario.
I am guessing that the host runs out of max. open files (or something like that), even though the guest only has a handful of files opened (?).

So... does anyone know a cure these two problems ? Or does anyone know how I can fix the incorrectly labeled files (preferably without a reboot of the host) ?
Thanks. :)
Last edited by tsr on 15. Aug 2008, 00:32, edited 1 time in total.
frank
Oracle Corporation
Posts: 3362
Joined: 7. Jun 2007, 09:11
Primary OS: Debian Sid
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Linux, Windows
Location: Dresden, Germany
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Post by frank »

What host is that? Please could you open a bug report?
tsr
Posts: 5
Joined: 8. Aug 2008, 02:29

Post by tsr »

I forgot i had the guest additions 1.5.6. still installed on the guest. updating them to 1.6.4 fixed the file size problem.
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