"Returned download failed: write /tmp No space left on device" error is seen when pulling an image from vSphere Integrated Containers

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• You see an error similar to the following when running a container using an image that has never been pulled or when pulling a new image:

name_of_the_image returned download failed: write /tmp/9f421896c380146187222: no space left on device

• When enabling debug mode and sshing to the VCH and running the command df -h you can see the rootfs partition is full.

Note: To enable debug mode on the VCH follow the instructions noted at Authorize SSH Access to the VCH Endpoint VM
 

 

Environment

VMware vSphere Integrated Containers 1.x

Cause

 

Resolution

This issue can occur when the /tmp partition becomes full while pulling an image that exceeds the available tmpfs space on the VCH.

To resolve this issue, you will need to increase the memory size of the VCH VM.

1. Shutdown the VCH VM.
2. Right click the VCH VM  --> Edit settings --> Resize memory to a larger value
3. Power on the VCH VMhttps://vmware.github.io/vic-product/assets/files/html/1.5/vic_vsphere_admin/vch_compute.html

Workaround:
There are two ways to workaround this issue.

1. Restart VCH gracefully so it free up the memory
2. Re-deploy VCH using a larger memory size. Either using the VIC plugin or vic-machine create command. To deploy the VCHs using larger memory size following the documented guidelines at Virtual Container Host Compute Capacity.

Note: By default, the VCHs are deployed with 2048 MB of memory unless specified.