Applications Archives | Page 10 of 11 | The Electric Toolbox Blog

VMWare Writelock Disk Error

VMWare is virtual machine software that lets you run a guest operating
system inside your operating system without having to reboot your
computer. This article covers an error that can happen which prevents
VMWare from starting up in the event of a crash. Note that I have only had
experience with this error on Linux systems, and it no longer appears to be
an issue with VMWare Workstation 4.5 and greater.

When starting VMWare, you may receive the following errors if it
crashed (or your system crashed) while you were using it:

“Unable to open either the disk ‘win98se-0.vmdk’ or the redo
log”

“Failed to configure disk ide0:0. The virtual machine cannot
be powered on with an unconfigured disk.”

This means VMWare was shut down without powering down the virtual
machine and left behind some files which lock the virtual disk files. To
fix it, you need to delete any of the write lock files which are named
.WRITELOCK in the Virtual Machine directory.

This is a sample listing of a VMWare virtual disk directory:

-rw------- 1 chris users 18664 2004-03-22 10:45 nvram -rw-r--r-- 1 chris users 11549 2004-03-23 09:33 vmware.log -rw------- 1 chris users 575340544 2004-03-22 17:27 win98se-0-s001.vmdk -rw------- 1 chris users 65536 2004-03-22 10:45 win98se-0-s002.vmdk -rw------- 1 chris users 389 2004-03-22 10:47 win98se-0.vmdk -r--r--r-- 1 chris users 11 2004-03-18 09:07 win98se-0.vmdk.WRITELOCK -rw------- 1 chris users 397 2003-12-15 19:08 win98se.vmdk -rwxr-xr-x 1 chris users 1558 2004-02-09 10:29 win98se.vmx -r--r--r-- 1 chris users 11 2004-03-18 09:07 win98se.vmx.WRITELOCK

In this example you would delete the write lock files named
win98se-0.vmdk.WRITELOCK and win98se.vmx.WRITELOCK then power up the virtual machine again.

Since upgrading to the 4.5 branch of VMWare I have no longer
experienced this problem.

Please also refer to this post on the VMWare message boards for another reason for getting this message and a possible solution.

Move Postgres data files when disk space is running out

I recently posted about how to move *nix application with minimal downtime, inspired by having to do this with a Postgres install I support. The last post looked at this in fairly general terms, and this post more specifically at the exact problem I experienced.

Mozilla Thunderbird exceeded maximum number of connections to IMAP server

When looking at emails in several IMAP folders one after the other in Mozilla Thunderbird, I got the following error message and was unable to view that folder and the emails in it.

"Unable to connect to your IMAP server. You may have exceeded the maximum number of connections to this server. If so, use the Advanced IMAP Server Settings dialog to reduce the number of cached connections."

Setting the tab size in nano

Nano is a text editor used on Linux and Unix based systems and is an enchanced free clone of the Pico text editor. By default the tab size in nano is 8 spaces, but it is possible to change the tab size either on the command line, in the system wide configuration file, or in a user specific configuration file.

Enable the Web Interface for uTorrent

The uTorrent bittorrent client has a web interface which allows you to control uTorrent with a web browser. This means you can control uTorrent while you are out and about or, in my case, from an upstairs laptop when the actual download is happening in my downstairs office. This post looks at how to enable the web interface for uTorrent version 1.7.7. It should work for all 1.7 versions.

Stop Adobe Photoshop CS2 on Vista asking you to register

On Windows Vista, every time you start up Adobe Photoshop CS2 you are asked to register. There’s an button labelled "Do Not Register", but despite clicking this the next time you start Adobe Photoshop CS2 you will be prompted to register again. This post looks at the solution for this problem.