Not Enough Memory

[charles]

I made the mistake of allocating only 3.3 GB of non-dynamic harddisk memory of my /home partition to VirtualBox. I didn't have much more to give! And I didn't think things were going to really work, anyway! But they do and greatly!!

Since then I moved the VDI directory to a separate logical partition on the same physical drive with more room. I symlinked it to a VDI link on my /home; or so it seems.The host OS is booting. Now I would like to expand the VirtualBox memory or change the setting to Dynamic.

I thought I would be able to do that.

I can't figure out how to change the allocated memory size without reinstalling what seems to be a perfectly functioning VirtualBox2.1 with USB.

Any solutions

[polki]

Please read the FAQ. It's got a section on VDI-resizing...

[charles]

I'm having trouble finding it, can you please provide a link. FAQ? HOWTO?

[polki]

See the PM answer...
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=8669

[charles]

Okay. Great resource. Thanks! But, I didn't want to use gparted. Can't I just use "VBoxManage modifyhd sttype normal" to set the existing harddisk storage to "dynamic" from it's current "static" state?? Or some VBoxManage command to do the same???

Using gparted on my /home I was always warned was a little dangerous.

I'll keep looking; thanks for the link.

[polki]

Well, static or dynamic makes no difference in your case. Dynamic just means that the space the VDI takes on the host is allocated dynamically. But it won't exceed the maximum size of the VDI you specified during creation.
So if you are already at this maximum size, static or dynamic will have no difference at all...

[charles]

Is the fact that a new symlink is in the /home partition and points to the new VDI location (mv VDI): the VDI now located in the "other physical drive" mean anything?

Or is my host OS being fooled?

And, so there's no way of increasing the original specified size of the VDI other than gparted? VBoxManage won't do it?

[polki]

And, so there's no way of increasing the original specified size of the VDI other than gparted? VBoxManage won't do it?

Right...

[Sasquatch]

Oh, Gparted isn't really needed, but it is recommended. Afterall, when you're done with CloneZilla, you still need to increase the partition size. Gparted is free, as where other tools like Paragon Partition Manager (Partition Magic is too old these days, or to much junk) are licensed.