Dynamic vdi appears smaller than set size

[mrcharly]

I'm using 4.0.4 on W7 and Centos as the guest OS.

I created a dynamic vdi with a size of 8Gb, and set up Centos in that vdi.

Tried using it and ran out of space. df -h in the guest Centos says I have 5.7Gb and only 1.4Gb free.

I usedVBManage modifyhd --resize to change the vdi to 15Gb.

In VirtualBox settings it shows the vdi as 15Gb. When I load Centos in the VM, it still shows 5.7Gb.

How come the guest os doesn't see the max dynamic size of the vdi?

[Perryg]

You have increased the size of the HD not the partition. Use Gparted (in the guests virtual CD/DVD) and increase the partition.

[mrcharly]

Finally got round to setting up Gpart.

As far as Gpart can tell, this vdi is 8Gb and not resizeable. I don't know what is going on.

[vbox4me2]

Run gparted IN the guest not the Host.

[mrcharly]

?
I booted with Gpart (via virtualbox)

[Perryg]

If you have booted the guest with Gparted and it says that the partition is 8GB and the Drive is 8GB then the increase did not happen. Can you post a screen shot of the Gparted screen showing the drive structure?

[vbox4me2]

Don't you see the new space at all ? there should be some unknown area listed of the size of what you expanded it to. Not running in a snapshot ?

[mrcharly]

Shot showing the supposed 15Gb vdi as reported by virtualbox


Booted into gpart

[vbox4me2]

Your running in a snapshot(4), you'd have to merge them all first before you see the new space.

[Perryg]

Not to mention that you are using LVM format which IIRC Gparted does not support yet. You would need to increase the partition within the OS using the LVM manager or CLI which ever the OS supports.

[mrcharly]

So merge snapshots and use LVM manager from within the os?

[vbox4me2]

Not 100% sure(lvm) so back it up first and try.

[mpack]

Do I understand that you resized the base VDI in a snapshot chain?

If so then you will hopefully get away with it; if VBoxManage changes the Modify-UUID during a resize, as it should, then I don't understand how your VM can still be running. It can be a fatal mistake to alter in any way any member of a snapshot chain except leaf entries, meaning those which have no children. The children are relying on the parents to provide the data which they do not store. You are changing that data and hence potentially providing unexpected data to all of the children.

It's also the kind of error that is hard to repair without a backup - and since snapshots are involved: even restoring a backup can be tricky if you aren't an expert.