# VSM Server wont start | ERROR vsmserver: Session database needs manual recovery

**URL:** <https://community.thinlinc.com/t/vsm-server-wont-start-error-vsmserver-session-database-needs-manual-recovery/1727>\
**Category:** Community Support\
**Tags:** thinlinc\
**Created:** [29 August 2025 17:57 UTC](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/vsm-server-wont-start-error-vsmserver-session-database-needs-manual-recovery/1727 "2025-08-29T17:57:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![JLBurroughs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@JLBurroughs](https://community.thinlinc.com/u/JLBurroughs)\
**Post date:** [29 August 2025 17:57 UTC](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/vsm-server-wont-start-error-vsmserver-session-database-needs-manual-recovery/1727/1 "2025-08-29T17:57:04Z")

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Hello there,

I’m running into an issue while trying to start vsmserver. I’ve tried upgrading to version 4.19 and ignoring the old config files during installation, but nothing seems to work.

OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.9 (Ootpa)

Output from /var/log/vsmserver.log

2025-08-29 13:38:01 ERROR vsmserver: Error loading session database: Error unpacking /var/lib/vsm/sessions (pickle data was truncated)  
2025-08-29 13:38:01 ERROR vsmserver: Session database needs manual recovery.  
2025-08-29 13:38:01 ERROR vsmserver: Exiting

Anyone know of a fix for this? Or how to recover the session database?

Thank you,

Josh Burroughs

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**Author:** ![aaron](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/community.thinlinc.com/aaron/32/13_2.png) [@aaron](https://community.thinlinc.com/u/aaron)\
**Post date:** [30 August 2025 02:23 UTC](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/vsm-server-wont-start-error-vsmserver-session-database-needs-manual-recovery/1727/2 "2025-08-30T02:23:13Z")

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Hi @JLBurroughs,

Welcome to the forum.

It looks like the session database has become corrupted somehow. If you don’t care about the existing sessions, you should just be able to delete the session database file (`/var/lib/vsm/sessions`) and reboot the server to kill any orphan sessions.

It would also be worth looking in to any reasons why the database became corrupted, for example insufficent space on `/var`.

Hope that helps.

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**Author:** ![JLBurroughs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@JLBurroughs](https://community.thinlinc.com/u/JLBurroughs)\
**Post date:** [3 September 2025 16:37 UTC](https://community.thinlinc.com/t/vsm-server-wont-start-error-vsmserver-session-database-needs-manual-recovery/1727/3 "2025-09-03T16:37:22Z")

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Hey there Aaron,

That fixed my issue, thanks for the help!

-Josh Burroughs