On multiple projects across multiple users I'm getting an error when trying to close or save a bin (on Unity) that states the Avid cannot allocate memory and another error about the .wrt file.

Why can't I locate the .wrt file and what is the workaround?

It would really help us if you could post the exact error and also the specs on your Editors and Unity system.

assistant_editor.......

We really need the errors reported here and a .wrt is a file extension.   Here is a good place to help you scan for .wrt

http://www.liutilities.com/products/campaigns/affiliate/cb/offer/filext/rb/

Let us know what you are seeing.

Marianna

Sorry guys. The post was written in a fit of panic as 20 editors slowly lost the ability to save their work. Not the correct way to use this awesome forum, so my appologies.

Crazy thing was, even after getting an error, and editor was able to save a copy to their desktop...

Here is a couple examples of the errors (taken from the APPEVENT.LOG:

Exception: Cannot allocate memory, filename:bin_name.wrt

Mac Error -41 (memory full (open) or file won't fit (load))

Errors would also pop up if their machine went into auto-save, stating the bin could not be saved to the attic.

In addition, what would happen is, a user would open a bin containing no lock file, but be given the red lock on the bin as if someone else had it open.

My general theory was a general permission issue with the Unity server, so I brought everything down to the floor for a few minutes and then booted everything back up. On the first attempt, I still got errors and couldn't even open a single project without getting an error telling me it couldn't allocate space (even with 60GB or so of free space on the drive). I also tried to create a new workspace but recieved a general server error preventing me from doing so. I tried again from the Unity server itself, recieved the error once, but tried again, this time successfully and every time after. From that point on, I could access and work regularly in any project. Since then everything's been up and running fine (HUGE KNOCK ON WOOD)...

That's a huge paragraph that might not make much sense. But feel free to interject where ever!

In unrelated news, I'm excited to say I've passed the Mac 400 ACSR course 100%. Can't wait for the Unity class where I think I'll gain the most knowledge!

UPDATE:

Possible fix and a startling revelation. Directory limit is 10,000 - we were riding around 17,500 :) Apparently it finally got high enough where it started crapping out. I deleted about 3,500 directories so far and things started running smooth again. Working over the next couple days at bringing it back down to a nice size. It's hard with our company. 24 fiber clients, 5 ethernet clients, over 40 current projects, 240 workspaces. PHEW!

Can't wait for the ACSR Unity class!

I've been reading all about the tales of woe with the dreaded wrt file, but I'm still not clear as to why my main sequence bin keeps crashing, thus turning the avb bin file into a useless and apparently irretrievable wrt file!?  Can anyone shed some light on this please?  When the bin "morphs" into a wrt file the following error message appears, "binSave: failure renaming temp bin file to final bin file" and when we click on "Raise Error" the following message appears "File" followed by the folder path to the project which is subsequently followed by about 50 forward slashes, which is then followed by the computer name, avid project name and then the dreaded ".wrt not found" message., at which point the bin physically disappears from the project window!  I've had this problem now on a Unity & ISIS system, plus stand alone avid, thus pointing to a local software / database issue.

Does anybody know if the directory limit of 10,000 is per Unity, Unity Workspace or per project?

We have this problem and a lot of media folders, wondered where we have to tighten our belts?

RalphFoster:

Does anybody know if the directory limit of 10,000 is per Unity, Unity Workspace or per project?

 

We have this problem and a lot of media folders, wondered where we have to tighten our belts?

That's per Unity system.. it's either 10k directories or 500k files. I'm not sure how you come up with more than 10k files because on our old Unity with about 20 clients we never reach the directories limit but we did reach the maximum number of files. I'm guessing that you have plenty of workspaces that's why plenty of directories are also created. I think it's just a matter of proper maintenance and It is better to have few workspaces.

The limits start at 10k directories & 500k files.  Then, every time you break through into another 10k directories, you lose 32k files.  At 17k directories, your file max would be 468k.

This "dynamic allocation" was implemented at my request back in 2001.  I was the onsite Avid tech for Fox Sports Net On-Air Promos in West Los Angeles.  We produced 500 spots a week, on 7 ABVB systems on Unity v1.1.  Each project has 3 folders (directories).  That's 1,500 new folders per week.  Every night we backed up the days work to a Unity Workspace.  We hit the 10k directory limit in less than a month.  Avid couldn't believe it and one of the engineers called me to find out what the heck we had done.  I explained I was only hitting 125k files, and would love to trade some file count for directories.  Initially, he said it would be too difficult to code, but then called to tell me it would be included in the next release ... v2.0. 

From the Unity MediaNet Release Notes for v2.0:

"MediaNet Release 2.0 added support for a 1-GB File Manager that can handle up to 250,000 files or a 2-GB File Manager that can handle up to 500,000 files. Also, you can increase the number of directories on the file system to more than 10,000. Doing so, however, decreases the total number of files you can store, by 32,000, each time you cross a 10,000 directory boundary. MediaNet warns you if you exceed either the directory or the file limits."

The "CVS Reports" were also my suggestion.  We had to do a weekly report for Fox, and it was taking waaaay too long.  I made a mock-up in Excel and gave it the the Avid team when they came out to visit us.

BTW .. my understanding is that .wrt is a "temp" file generated during Bin creation.  If the creation of the Bin fails, the .wrt gets left behind.

Randall, that's pretty cool.  Stories like that rarely surface when people are all about bashing on Avid.  In your situation, they listened to you and (appropriately) made changes.

In regards to the .wrt file, I figure it stands for "write."  Whether or not, that's what it's doing.  ...kinda like a creating file, it's creating something.  a .wrt file is something that it's writing.  It's gotta reserve the space for it before it can save the file to the workspace.  The .wrt is the first step...and when it can't create any more files, that's where the error gets thrown.

~Hammer

OH, and as a quick (possible) solution to the problem--at least to get you through the end of the day, perhaps--the Unity Attic can often be a source of many many directories.  Each bin that is saved has its own folder.  Backing that up to an external drive & blowing it away may get you to the end of the day where you can perform more extensive media/unity management. 

(and on a side note to that, often times having a huge unity attic can cause your environment to run slowly, so it's not a bad idea to do this anyway)

My best "Avid Support Rocks!" story was right after we purchased the Unity.  We were the first ones to discover the "mixed drive-size bug".  Again, this was MN 1.1.  Basically, if you built a new Drive Set with one size of drive, and then attempted to expand the Drive Set with a different size drive, the whole Drive Set "appeared" to have been lost.

We had approx 60 x 18GB drives that we were using in an old fiber MediaShare.  Our new Unity came with 10 x 50GB's.  Um, yeah, they sucked, but we didn't know that until later, and the 73GB's were not available yet.

My plan was to build the drive set with the 50's, and then attach the MediaShare drives as "local" drives, and copy the media off into new Unity Workspaces.  Well, the first problem was that the copies kept failing. The short version of this was I had to disable the MediaShare software, as it was corrupting the media and copies.  Yes, MediaShare was corrupting media.  Explains alot about why MediaShare never really worked :)

Meanwhile, after I built the initial Drive Set, and copied all the media from a JBOD of 18's, I tried to add the 18's to the existing Drive Set.  Poof.  All gone ... kinda sorta.  Somehow, I was able to copy the media back and start all over ... which I did many many times over the next 2 weekends.

I eventually called Van Bedient in the Burbank office late on a Saturday.  He got in touch with Sandy Snaman and Tim Lambert in Tewks.  Tim actually left his wife's birthday party and went back to the office to try and resolve my issue.  He was able to show me through the CLI that the Drive Set was, in fact, still there.  It just "looked" like it had been screwed up.  With that, he was able to figure out why the GUI was doing it.  He fixed the problem, and sent me a new Midway.exe file.  Bingo ... all better.  By Monday morning FSN had a shiny new Unity system.

This is just one of many stories where Avid support or engineers have gone way above the call of duty to provide the most excellent support in the industry.  And this is why our offline storage is all Avid Unity.

Avid Support is really cool.. I know there are thousands of similar stories or situations like this in the past.

Hey guys,

I dont know if you ever got an answer to your original question what is a <binname>.wrt file. The <binname>.wrt is a temp file that gets generated when the editor saves out the bin. In normal operation, then get deleted once the bin is saved sucessfully. If you are getting errors writing the <binname>.wrt, then there are problems writing to the project location. Also, if you are finding <binname>.wrt lying around, then there are probably editors crashing somewhere.

I think you are on the right track already diggin into your storage. Also, make sure you have room on the storage particularly if you are using shared projects as multiple clients make multiple temp files and you can be intermittently full.

Hope this helps.