CloneVDI tool - Discussion & Support

[mpack]

That partition map shows a 16GB drive. A tad small I'd have thought. Is that what you created?

P.s. (I don't know if its related at all, but the coincidence seems strong) did you read that discussion just a few posts above yours, concerning compaction with a latest Debian system? I don't recall Debian being discussed here at all (since 2009) before these recent posts, so if it's coincidence then it's a big one!

[Beppler]

That partition map shows a 16GB drive. A tad small I'd have thought. Is that what you created?

Yes, I created a 16GB drive to reproduce the problem. The basic debian install without graphical environment uses only 1.5GB.

P.s. (I don't know if its related at all, but the coincidence seems strong) did you read that discussion just a few posts above yours, concerning compaction with a latest Debian system? I don't recall Debian being discussed here at all (since 2009) before these recent posts, so if it's coincidence then it's a big one!

The problem is the same, all the messages are related to distros based on debian.

I'm using VirtualBox 5.1.22 and the problem happens only with debian 9, a new machine created with debian 8.8 is compacted without any problem.

I think that something on the way that debian 9 creates the partitions is making CloneVDI thinks that only 339MB of the disk is in use and not 1.4GB of actual data.

[mpack]

Did you try the tunefs thing mentioned? Prior to compaction of course: it's a preventive measure, not a fix.

[Perryg]

Don,
I just tested this on a new Debian 9 guest (using your CloneVDI program version 2.51) with default install options and cloned to increase the drive size to 30GB from 25GB, compress, and expand partition options enabled. It worked flawlessly but I did this via wine as I don't have Windows anything.
New info from drive below:

Code: Select all   Expand viewCollapse view

perry@perry-main /drive/Drive1/VirtualBox-VMs/Debian/Debian-9 $ VBoxManage showmediuminfo "Clone of Debian-9.vdi"
UUID:           12619e1d-6b56-43cf-84c6-5f5af6d4f76a
Parent UUID:    base
State:          created
Type:           normal (base)
Location:       /drive/Drive1/VirtualBox-VMs/Debian/Debian-9/Clone of Debian-9.vdi
Storage format: VDI
Format variant: dynamic default
Capacity:       30720 MBytes
Size on disk:   9188 MBytes
Encryption:     disabled


[mpack]

Well that's bad news. If I'm to fix this I definitely need to be able to reproduce it. You said you used default install options. Could you possibly check explicitly whether it has that filesystem checksum feature enabled? I assume there's a Linux tool that reports on a filesystem.

Running under Wine should be fine: I can't imagine what difference the host platform would make.

@Beppler: did you choose any non default options when you installed Debian 9?

[Perryg]

Linux does journal testing at boot since kernel version 3.5 and it can do metadata checksum, not by default but run manually (metadata_csum via tune2fs). I believe some RPM based might do metadata checksum testing by default but I see nothing like that in Debian. Oh Debian still uses Ext4 as default and some of the exotic formats are available as a choice.

I can't imagine what difference the host platform would make.

Just a guess but IMHO it is really using the host FS and format to do the actual work since the guest drive is in essence a large file residing on the host.

[Beppler]

@Beppler: did you choose any non default options when you installed Debian 9?

The only non default option is that I create only 1 partiton and use it as root, by default Debian creates at least a swap partition that I did not created.

I also tried the tune2fs method (using an Debian 9 live iso), but had no success.

[mpack]

I can't make any promises regarding when I'll have time to look at it, but for when I do: it would be helpful if you gave me a link to the exact Debian installer you downloaded - and maybe also zip up your .vbox file so that my VM can be made identical to yours.

[Beppler]

I can't make any promises regarding when I'll have time to look at it, but for when I do: it would be helpful if you gave me a link to the exact Debian installer you downloaded - and maybe also zip up your .vbox file so that my VM can be made identical to yours.

I downloaded Debian 9 from this link: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-9.0.0-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso.

Also I'm attaching some prints of the choices made during the installation.

[Beppler]

I can't make any promises regarding when I'll have time to look at it, but for when I do: it would be helpful if you gave me a link to the exact Debian installer you downloaded - and maybe also zip up your .vbox file so that my VM can be made identical to yours.

As requested, follows the box file.

[mpack]

Do I see "Logical Volume Manager" in there? If LVM is enabled then CloneVDI doesn't support it, and certainly compaction can't work. I normally wouldn't expect this to be a problem though - I was under the impression that CloneVDI just does nothing in that case (it doesn't recognize the filesystem).

[Beppler]

Do I see "Logical Volume Manager" in there? If LVM is enabled then CloneVDI doesn't support it, and certainly compaction can't work. I normally wouldn't expect this to be a problem though - I was under the impression that CloneVDI just does nothing in that case (it doesn't recognize the filesystem).

No I did not used LVM, just a primary partition with all the space allocated and formatted as ext4.

[mpack]

Um. While I'm downloading the ISO, I had a look at the .vbox file. This VM seems to be a linked clone - the primary disk is a difference image. How exactly are you compacting this?

[socratis]

I had a look at the .vbox file. This VM seems to be a linked clone - the primary disk is a difference image.

Where did you see that? What am I missing?

[mpack]

His last post above has his zipped .vbox file ("debian-9-test.vbox"). The media registry and Storage Attachment tags reference a diff image.

Oh wait - no they don't. I was reading the UUID as the filename. I must be tired - up early today.