[WorksForMe] Allocated disk space and what is available for guest OS

[swcng2001]

Hello,

I am not sure if this is a VirtualBox issue or one due to the Guest OS.

I installed VirtualBox 5.2.26 on my iMac Pro running MacOS 10.14.3. During the creation of a VM (in my case I was installing LinuxMint 18.3) I set the virtual disk size for 32GB (dynamic sizing). Installation went through with a few rough patches to do with window sizing but that's not the issue.

Everything seems to go alright until I started getting "out of disk space" problems.

df (on a freshly installed VM) on the linux guest returned the following -

Filesystem      Size  Used  Avail  Use%  Mounted on
udev             12G     0    12G    0%  /dev
tmpfs           2.4G  9.1M   2.4G    1%  /run
/dev/sda1       7.8G  5.8G   1.7G   79%  /
tmpfs            12G   22M    12G    1%  /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K   5.0M    1%  /run/lock
tmpfs            12G     0    12G    0%  /sys/fs/cgroup
cgmfs           100K     0   100K    0%  /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs           2.4G   24K   2.4G    1%  /run/user/1000

The /dev/shm and /sys/fs/cgroup file systems have between them swallowed up 24GB. This leaves 12GB to be divided up by the other the other filesystems. Its no wonder what I am running into disk space problems.

I have VirtualBox 5.2.22 running on another iMac with MacOS 10.13.6 and the same LinuxMint 18.3 guest OS. It has a more sensible disk allocation -

Filesystem      Size  Used  Avail  Use%  Mounted on
udev            3.9G     0   3.9G    0%  /dev
tmpfs           798M  9.1M   789M    2%  /run
/dev/sda1        24G   18G   4.5G   81%  /
tmpfs           3.9G  1.2M   3.9G    1%  /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K   5.0M    1%  /run/lock
tmpfs           3.9G     0   3.9G    0%  /sys/fs/cgroup
cgmfs           100K     0   100K    0%  /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs           798M   20K   798M    1%  /run/user/1000

Is this a VirtualBox issue or a Linux install issue?

Regards.

Stephen

[socratis]

This is a Guest issue, VirtualBox has no clue what's going on allocation-wise in any guest. It doesn't care actually, the same way that Apple doesn't know or care what you have installed on your Mac.

Moving to "Linux Guests" from "OSX Hosts".

For reference, here's what my Mint 19 looks like (don't have a Mint 18 available), on a 40 GB VDI:

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            714M     0  714M   0% /dev
tmpfs           149M  1,1M  148M   1% /run
/dev/sda1        40G  8,5G   29G  23% /
tmpfs           745M     0  745M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5,0M  4,0K  5,0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           745M     0  745M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
Shared          465G  425G   41G  92% /media/sf_Shared
tmpfs           149M   32K  149M   1% /run/user/1000

[swcng2001]

Socratis,

Thanks. I finally worked out how to make the disk allocations during install.

[socratis]

Glad you figured it out. Marking as [WorksForMe], sounds better than [Invalid]...