I'm using Eclipse Kepler on Windows 7 and recently it became more and more frequent that it takes lots of time when it has to delete files. For example in these contexts:
mvn clean launched from Eclipse
cleaning output folder in case of automatic projects build by Eclipse
deploying a war on a server (deletion of the previous deployment)
I've checked this old question but working in a fresh new workspace has no effect.
I may have a clue: to gain some time I 'help' Eclipse by deleting the files myself with Windows Explorer. Windows often launches a pop-up saying that I need admin right to do that. I just hit Enter (I am admin user) and the files are quickly deleted. If Eclipse had no right to delete the files I would have expected an error, instead it just takes much more time to actually delete the files.
Why could be the cause of that? Knowing that the clue may or may not be relevant.
For the record: no solution has been found to the problem. I got a new desktop with a fresh Win7 image and I don't have the problem, working with the same Eclipse projects.
This would indicate that the problem came from a misconfiguration of the Windows user permission. Sadly, no more details available.
Eclipse crashed and deleted all project files, including written by me and XML files from another program which were not related to Eclipse.
Is it possible to force Eclipse or JVM to use trash can, so that if it goes mad and delete everything, files could restored.
UPDATE
Files were definitely wiped out. This was checked with third party file managers. Also entire disc were searched for traces.
Some good news is that Eclipse history remained. This allowed to restore some files I changed from Eclipse. But this project was consisting of multiple other files, that were written not by me (taken from other libraries) or contained some data I was editing not in Eclipse (like XML or raw data).
All these files were wiped out by Eclipse.
If this would not happen to me I would also say it is unlikely. But it has happened.
The problem is somehow related with
(1) Eclipse
(2) Maven (m2e)
(3) Eclipse RCP
(4) Tycho
At some moment Eclipse started to show numerous error windows and I was to kill the process. After that I found files absent.
So I need some extra protection layer.
UPDATE 2
Crash repeated. This is a message during file wiping out:
This time I was not using Maven and Tycho.
UPDATE 3
Third crash.
Crash occurs only after error Application ... could not be found in the registry, which itself buggie.
UPDATE 4
Still unable to reproduce situation from scratch...
UPDATE: I think from this question you were working on an Eclipse RCP plugin or something like that when this happened.
So you probably broke your Eclipse in some fashion. Do not trust anything Eclipse tells you at this point! Look at the actual filesystem!
Eclipse crashed and deleted all project files, including written by me and XML files from another program which were not related to Eclipse.
That's highly unlikely. (Especially if those XML files were not in the workspace. But even if they were, it's very unlikely.) You probably opened a new workspace without realising it, or maybe Eclipse has some bug where it won't show you files that are actually there. Or maybe you accidentally switched to the wrong view (in Java the normal view for files is Package Explorer, if I remember correctly).
Or maybe you were storing your workspace on a USB stick (aka pen drive) or network drive and you accidentally disconnected from it without realising it.
Check in the workspace (the actual workspace you were using at the time, not the workspace you are now using, which, as I said, might not be the same thing), using Windows Explorer (if you are using Windows) or Finder (if you are using a Mac) or using ls (if you are using something else). Are the files really gone?
This Was My Fault
I was setting up a workspace location pointing to project folder and also setting clear workspace checkbox.
::shame::
I'm using Eclipse Indigo on Mac 10.7.4. While working, I get these periodic, annoying dialogs
'Periodic workspace save.' has encountered a problem.
Could not write metadata for '/.org.eclipse.jdt.core.external.folders'.
/Users/davea/Dropbox/workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.projects/.org.eclipse.jdt.core.external.folders/.markers.snap (No such file or directory)
I seem to be able to continue as normal, but I was wondering how I can eliminate these errors.
I had the same problem.
'Periodic workspace save.' has encountered a problem.
Could not write metadata for '/External Files'. D:\java\fuentes\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources\.projects\External
Files\.markers.snap (El sistema no puede hallar la ruta especificada)
I created the folder "External Files" and it worked fine. In a few minutes the files ".markers.snap" and ".syncinfo.snap" appeared in this folder and the message didn´t appear any more.
I fixed mine by closing eclipse and deleting the whole .metadata folder inside my workspace folder.
Today I faced the same issue consistently, whenever I exit the eclipse.
While trying the above solution provided by TS.xy, the below steps got rid of this issue for now.
Switch to new workspace and close the Eclipse.
Open the Eclipse with new workspace and after that switch to the actual workspace(in which
exception occurs).
Actual workspace loaded with all my previous projects.
Now exiting the Eclipse, does not result in that exception.
Hope that this step may work for someone.
Just for another data point, none of the above helped my situation. The way I finally got past this issue is that each time Eclipse complained about some folder not being there, I went on my hard drive and created the folder. E.g. after I see
Could not write metadata for '/servers'.
C:\...\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.resources\.projects\servers\.markers.snap (The system cannot find the path specified.)
I create the "servers" folder (not the file inside it). This gets me to the next error. I went through 3-4 of these iterations (exiting Eclipse each time to force the save) before the issues went away.
HTH, Mark
This was simple for me -
Solution
(pre) the listed directory is not present, see pic
Run Eclipse, see the error shown in pic below. Close Eclipse
Create the directory (RemoteSystemsTempFiles) where it is looking
note: ignore the items in this folder (e.g. .markers), they are auto-generated
Restart Eclipse, problem solved!
Example Problem Message
Not sure why this took me so long to resolve, but quite easy now, and quite obvious in retrospect! ;)...
Using Ubuntu, got the same issue
I noticed that the owner of some of the directories in
~/workspace/.metadata/.plugins/ ...etc...
was root
changed owner to me and the error stopped happening.
Looks like the same sort of issue may be caused by multiple causes.
Close the Eclipse , Clear the .metadata folder completely.. Start Eclipse & Import the necessary project once again if your project references are deleted..
The solution that work for me is the following:
Delete .metadata folder
Restart eclipse
Solved it by setting workspace on a local folder, and set data from import project, from existing resources.
I encountered the same problem , my resolution was to rename the the folder name under the workspace folder. i.e. com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.alertmanager.embedded was renamed to com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.alertmanager.2embeddedxx and rebuilt my project.
In my case, because I've accidentally deleted my workspace folder, and I observed the 'Periodic workspace save has encountered a problem". To solve this issue, I just simply create a new workspace and load all my projects to the new one. Hope you can solve your problem by doing the same thing.
I also ran into this problem. My situation was a little different. I was using 'working sets' to group my projects inside of eclipse. What I had done was attempt to delete a project and received errors while deleting. Ignoring the errors I removed the project from my working set and thus didn't see that I even had the project anymore. When I received my error I didn't think to look through my package explorer with 'projects', opposed to working sets, as my top view. After switching to a top level view of projects I found the project that was half deleted and was able to delete its contents from both my workspace and the hard drive.
I haven't had the error since.
I had gotten a little too aggressive about removing some directories in my project area when I was running out of disk space, and deleted this directory. Eclipse can leave some huge core files if it crashes in your workspace directories, (I had 35 gig of them) so it's worth taking a look there in your workspaces occasionally.
Anyway, as per the problem I tried the 'create a directory' approach. And it worked.
I was also seeing this error when I closed Eclipse by the way, not only after the 'periodic save'. So the exit/restart was also part of this.
Note that the last item on the directory path specified in the error message is a file -- not a directory, so don't get confused here. Probably worth checking that the directory permissions are created correctly as well (as the other projects in the workspace I think).
Obviously this is a bug in the Eclipse code base, (creating the full directory path under the file that is being created), but had I not deleted it in the first place, I would not have caused it in the first place.
I have the same problem since yesterday. Yesterday, I fixed it by creating a new workspace and reimporting the projects. It seemed to work well, but today it started again.
So, today I created the folder and the file manually and gave the full permissions -rwxrwxrwx.
Seems to work again...
Close Eclipse. Open RemoteSystemsTempFiles folder in Workspace, and clear inside this folder. Again open eclipse and close, warn about .project. Press Ok, then open Eclipse.
Solved my problem that.
I ran into this problem today after they switched our anti-virus software to Kaspersky.
In my case, the platform is Windows 7. My workspace is stored on mapped network drive. The strange thing is that, even though this appears to be a permission issue, I could manipulate files and folders at the same level as the inaccessible file without incident. So far, the only two workarounds are to move the workspace to the local drive or to uninstall Kaspersky. Removing and re-installing Kaspersky without the firewall feature did not do the trick.
I will update this answer if and when we find a more accommodating solution, though I expect that will involve adjusting the anti-virus software, not Eclipse.
In my case, the drive I was storing my workspace on had become full downloading SDK updates full and I just needed to clear some space on it.
This happened to me because i deleted one of the resources files inside the .metadata folder in my workspace.
After trying all methods, deleting the .metadata folder in my workspace worked.
Infact, this nuke option seems to work when there are a lot of issues related to eclipse bugs. One such example is working-sets. Working-sets are extremely buggy(but useful) and it is there that most of my eclipse problems start.
Hope this helps someone.
I solved the problem switching the workspace.
Go to File (Switch workspace)
Select the destination and create a folder named Workspace
Run a Hello World and close Eclipse (notice that Eclipse creates the folder RemoteSystemsTempFiles automatically)
now copy all your projects into the new folder Workspace
Open Eclipse and if necessary (sometimes Eclipse does not show the projects) import all of them (go to File/ Open projects from File System)
After you exit the eclipse, there would be an specific failed reason.
Mine is that the DISK IS FULL so the eclipse can't write into it anymore.
Agree with #J-Dizzle,
I am a beginner in web-development and had a hard time solving this today.
Had similar problems when I was creating a SpringBoot project in STS.
Tried most of the solutions mentioned but they didn't work.
Tried removing .metadata folder and re-building my springboot project but still nothing worked.
NOTE : I had multiple workspace in STS and this error occurred after migrating a project from one workspace to another.
Solution : All you need to do is restart your eclipse/STS IDE and it will work just fine.
My computer suddenly shut down due to power failure, while I was working on an Android project using my Eclipse Indigo IDE.
Now, if I start Eclipse, only an empty message dialog (see screen shot) appears and Eclipse does not start. What can I do?
(I am using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS)
Mabe Some files found in the .metadata folder of your workspace are damaged, have you tried to launch it by specifying another workspace?
You can manually specify the workspace location on the command line, using the -data command-line argument.
If you don't want to loose a lot of time by trying to fix the problem, you can import your projects into the new workspace, reinstall the plugins that was installed before and everything will be ok. otherwise, you have to take a look on the .log file found in the .metadata folder of your old workspace, analyse the stacktrace and try to understand which plugin is corrupted and delete it manually, and this may take a lot of time, thats why i suggest you the first solution. About the .metadata folder, it is in ~old_workspace/.metadata.
check your filesystems. Maybe something got corrupted when power was lost.
Check my blog post When Eclipse Won't Start and Restoring a Corrupted Workspace in Eclipse
For me, .metadata files were damaged. Since eclipse was not opening at all, changing the workspace was not an option. I deleted following directories, and could start afresh!
.metadata
.buildpath
.project
Hope this helps you as well.
Please note that you will end up loosing all the project settings.
I know my reply is too late. Hope this helps another user.
My Ubuntu in the VMware was shutdown abnormally for some reason. When I logged back in Eclipse would not start. I fixed with the following steps:
removed .lock file in the .metadata folder in the workspace
started eclipse using command line with "-clean" argument
It started fine!!!
I tried to find the corrupted file by removing the files from ~/workspace/.metadata/ one by one until Eclipse could start.
The corrupted file was ~/workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.snap
Once the file was removed Eclipse started normally.
Question: where does Eclipse store the list of files it opens on startup?
Background: Having installed a plugin into Eclipse which promptly crashed, my Eclipse workspace is in a bit of a state. When started, the building workspace task pauses indefinitely at 20%. Before I uninstall the plugin I want to give it another chance. I have a feeling that the reason Eclipse is pausing is because of a file which was opened when it crashed, which it tries to reopen on startup. If I can stop this file from opening on startup there's a chance I may be able to coax the plugin to behave. The problem is I have no idea where that list of files is persisted between runs of Eclipse.
...a second before I posted this question, I realised I could just delete the file causing the problem (duh). However, the search has frustrated me enough to want to find the answer.
In your workspace the following file contains your workbench information:
.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.ui.workbench/workbench.xml
It is possible to delete it (or edit it but that requires some fiddling around I suppose) without breaking your workspace, the file gets regenerated by Eclipse. When you delete it all workbench related settings are lost (ie all editors are closed), but your projects of that workspace stay intact.
Edit: in Eclipse 4.2 the file is
.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.e4.workbench/workbench.xmi