Hi,
I am getting the same error. I did set the environment to an external drive with LOTS of space. When I run it though I did notice it repeats the subject path which is the external drive but then says actual path ~/apps/freesurfer/subjects - this doesn't have much space cause it's a virtualbox and I don't know how to make it bigger. But the error below seems to be pointing to the right directory /home/...Desktop etc.
>
> GCAMwrite(transforms/talairach.m3z): gzip encountered error.
> writing output transformation to transforms/talairach.m3z...
> mri_ca_register: GCAMwrite(transforms/talairach.m3z) failed
> ERROR: mri_ca_register with non-zero status 252
> but continuing despite the error
> #--------------------------------------
> #@# CA Reg Inv Thu May 26 12:42:11 EDT 2011
> /home/virtualuser/Desktop/freeSurfer/CG2/mri
>
> mri_ca_register -invert-and-save transforms/talairach.m3z
>
> Loading, Inverting, Saving, Exiting ...
> Reading transforms/talairach.m3z
> ERROR: cannot find or read transforms/talairach.m3z
> ERROR: mri_ca_register with non-zero status 0
> Linux FreeSurfer 2.6.28-11-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
>
> Cheers,
> Vanessa