Shrink VirtualBox Linux guest VDI?
Hello,
I have Fedora 17 and Scientific Linux 6.2 guest systems running under VirtualBox 4.1.18. I read here that there is a way to shrink a guest machine's VDI hard disk image. However, its Linux guest instructions say that the method only works for ext3 filesystems. The article was written in 2009, probably why a method for ext4 was not mentioned. My virtual machines use ext4. Is there a way to effectively shrink my Linux guest VDI in VirtualBox, perhaps similar to the method described in the linked article? Thanks! |
It states it doesn't work for ext4, so it was at least considered - maybe even tested.
Perhaps try just creating an empty (as in /dev/zero) file of sufficient size using "dd" then delete it. Then try the compact. |
OK, I think I will try your suggestion and just take advantage of /dev/zero. However, the RHEL documentation (I presume it will work for Scientific Linux 6.2, and more or less for Fedora 17??) said there are three "recovery modes": rescue, single-user, and emergency.
Do you know which one is more appropriate for this attempt? I guess probably not single-user mode, because the documentation said "it does not give you the option to mount the file systems as read-only or not mount them at all" (from here). What about the other two? Thanks! |
Sorry, this thread got "lost" in my mail.
I don't understand your question. Log into the relevant guest, create a "big" zero-fill file, then delete it. Do it from a "normal" user should suffice I would think. Shut the guest down, and try the compact run on the inactive guest. |
Quote:
Therefore I was wondering *which* recovery mode I should boot the guest system into, because RHEL/Fedora has *three* different recovery modes... |
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