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3

How to change partitions on Ubuntu virtual machine?

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 5833 / 2 Years ago, mon, july 11, 2022, 4:43:14

Original Question: How to resize root partition without live CD?

I have a virtual machine that I need to make bigger. I made the VM img larger and now I need to resize the partitions so I can use the extra space.

This is my current partition table and the goal is to combine /dev/vda1 and /dev/vda2.

vda1 is my current root partition

vda2 is an extended partition that contains vda5(swap)

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/vda1   *        2048    18874367     9436160   83  Linux

/dev/vda2        18876414    20969471     1046529    5  Extended

/dev/vda5        18876416    20969471     1046528   82  Linux swap / Solaris

This would be simple with Gparted and a live CD, but I can only ssh to the server, or open it in virt-manager but it is still command line only. How can I possibly resize the root partition?

The VM is Ubuntu server 12.04.

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emuralm

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2 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago ickump · Accepted Answer

Here is what worked in the end:

Enlage the img (virtual disk image) file for the VM:

Create raw disc file

sudo qemu-img create -f raw addon.raw 10G

Backup current img
```
sudo mv domain.img domain.old.img
```

Combine original and extra to create img file of new larger size.
```
sudo cat domain.old.img addon.raw >> domain.img
```

Now we have a larger image but the VM still has old partition table.

Now the tricky part.

The next steps are done on the host machine with VM shutdown

Download iso file for gparted:

wget -c http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/0.6.4-1/gparted-live-0.6.4-1.iso

Boot the iso with the virtual image as the harddrive in the virtual system

kvm -m 512 -hda domain.img -cdrom gparted-live-0.6.4-1.iso -boot d

We are basically launching a virtual system kvm that will boot from the cdrom -boot d and gparted is in the cdrom -cdrom gparted-live-0.6.4-1.iso and in this virtual system treat domain.img as the harddrive -hda domain.img and allocate 512mb memory for this virtual system-m 512.

Now gparted pops up with a nice GUI (there is probably a command line option as well) ready to repartition your virtual disk.

Now you can manipulate the partition table just like you were using a liveCD on a real machine.

Most of this information was taken from this blog post by Chris Walden.

Thanks guntbert for pointing me in the right direction (i.e. it is possible to boot a VM from a liveCD).