Eclipse: "'Periodic workspace save.' has encountered a pro‍blem."

Question

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.

Answer 1

The solution that work for me is the following:

1. Delete .metadata folder
2. Restart eclipse

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

I solved the problem switching the workspace.

1. Go to File (Switch workspace)
2. Select the destination and create a folder named Workspace
3. Run a Hello World and close Eclipse (notice that Eclipse creates the folder RemoteSystemsTempFiles automatically)
4. now copy all your projects into the new folder Workspace
5. Open Eclipse and if necessary (sometimes Eclipse does not show the projects) import all of them (go to File/ Open projects from File System)

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

This was simple for me -

Solution

1. (pre) the listed directory is not present, see pic
2. Run Eclipse, see the error shown in pic below. Close Eclipse

3. Create the directory (RemoteSystemsTempFiles) where it is looking

   • note: ignore the items in this folder (e.g. .markers), they are auto-generated

4. 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! ;)...

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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.

Answer 11

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.

Answer 12

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...

Answer 13

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.

Answer 14

Solved it by setting workspace on a local folder, and set data from import project, from existing resources.

Answer 15

Close the Eclipse , Clear the .metadata folder completely.. Start Eclipse & Import the necessary project once again if your project references are deleted..

Answer 16

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.

Answer 17

I fixed mine by closing eclipse and deleting the whole .metadata folder inside my workspace folder.

Answer 18

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

Answer 19

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.

Answer 20

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.

1. Switch to new workspace and close the Eclipse.
2. Open the Eclipse with new workspace and after that switch to the actual workspace(in which exception occurs).
3. Actual workspace loaded with all my previous projects.
4. Now exiting the Eclipse, does not result in that exception.

Hope that this step may work for someone.

Answer 21

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.