Strange problem with SB and VMWare

Hi,

I recently moved all my development over to running under VMWare workstation 8.0. Those not familiar with this technology.... it is a way to run multiple operating systems at the same time on your PC.

Anyhow, all works fine except under one circumstance with SB 7 running under XP OS and when using VM shared folder. I don't believe my problem is a direct SB issue, but would like some clarification so that I might be able to figure how to fix this or better report the error to VMWare.

So here is the deal... this is a high end pc with Intel i7, 16 Gig Ram on Host, and plenty of HD space. When running an XP OS with SB7 building an installer with 1500+ files that reside on the same local drive as SB, all works fine everytime. When I move my install files to a shared folder (i.e. different drive location on a network) and attempt for SB to build the installer, it fails halfway through everytime. Furthermore, when it fails, it causes VMWare's shared folder connection to disconnect completely from the OS (see second picture) and any other applications on my pc now have problems accessing the shared folder.


Million dollar question... what is SB doing during this "Scanning folder: ...." stage? From my attached pics, you can see that SB was humming along and then at some point, the shared folder no longer communicated with SB and SB returned an empty memory queue.
Once I completely exit SB, the shared folder starts working again immediately.

Any thoughts?

Thanks In advance,
Doug

Doug,

We are also using VMWare 8.0.2 on all machines here (using VMWare for more than seven years now). The best thing since sliced bread <g>

I would suggest to report this issue to VMWare. You are correct that this is not a SB issue. The compiler simply uses the Clarion DIRECTORY() command to get a file directory listing. By design, it does not report a fatal compiler error if the shared folder is not accessible (e.g. "lost" connection).

Friedrich

Hi Friedrich,

Yes... I agree, VMWare is awesome and kick myself for not using it sooner.

I have reported this to VM and it is an open issue. I was just trying to get any extra info that might help them figure this out.

Same setup under a WIndows 7 64-bit VM using the same shared folder and all works fine.

Like I said in the Post Title... STRANGE!

Doug

Hi,

Well, I have some new info to report on this subject.
First, VMWare support was clueless to the issue and did not provide me any direction. However, upon further tinkering, I have narrowed down the problem area and have temporarily found a workaround, but I am no longer certain the problem is not SB related in some way.

It appears that the extensive use of the Install File command with the "Recurse Folder" option causes SB / VMWare to lose connection to the shared folder where my install files reside.

When I run smaller SB install scripts thru my VM Shared folder, all is fine.
But my largest SB script does a lot of recursive folder related stuff. One install folder in particular has 30 sub-folders and each sub-folder has one more sub-folder under it. In some way, this causes instability during the SB compile process.

My workaround is to remove the "Recurse Folder" option and manually add each folder and subfolder to copy as a separate line in my SB script.

The instability seems more SB related, since I can pull up Win Explorer and access the shared folder the moment I close SB. Once SB reports an error during the compile, the shared folder connection is dead unitl I exit SB.

I just can't explain why SB does not experience this under Win 7 or when the local folder is used instead.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

Doug,

Unfortunately, this is not a SetupBuilder issue so we can't do anything here because it is completely out of our control. And no, the instability is not SB related at all :)

It's a very simple process. The compiler just recurses through all folders to retrieve the files and stores the file locations in a queue. Then it processes the queue to compress the files. That's it.

If you Google for "Insufficient System Resources" and "VMWARE" then you'll find quite a few interesting links.

Perhaps you can check the vmware.log files in the VM folder to see if there is any indication of issues.

Hope this helps a bit.

Friedrich

BTW, and make sure that it is not related to your protection software product, e.g. Trend Micro.

Similar to this:

http://www.technologyquestions.com/c...d-serv.215307/

Friedrich