Monday, September 03, 2007

How to increase the VMWare (preallocated) disk space.

I have started using ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) recently. But for some of our office work, I needed older version of ubuntu(6.06). And for that I used VMWare.

Initially I allocated 6GB space to ubuntu 6.06 virtual machine, which I found that is not sufficient for my work. So decided to increase it to 10GB. And after some search in google found a way to increase VMWare disks spaces. Following blog entry is to record the steps which I followed and it might be useful for others also.

I initially tried to increase ubuntu6.06 virtual machine disk size using the following commands:
$cd /var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/Ubuntu6.04
$vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10Gb Ubuntu6.04.vmdk

It gave the following errors:
Using log file /tmp/vmware-msubramanian/vdiskmanager.log
This disk is part of a snapshot chain in '/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines/Ubuntu6.04/Ubuntu6.04.vmx'.
The selected operation can only be executed on a disk with no snapshots.

I found I have snapshots of ubuntu6.06 vmware disk.

Used the following method to remove the snapshots:
In the VMWare menu, used the Remove Snapshot option,
VM --> Remove Snapshot .. ( This is done while the Virtual machine is switched off)

Again tried using vmware-vdiskmanager it worked.

$vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10Gb Ubuntu6.04.vmdk
Using log file /tmp/vmware-msubramanian/vdiskmanager.log
Grow: 100% done.
The old geometry C/H/S of the disk is: 783/255/63
The new geometry C/H/S of the disk is: 1305/255/63
Disk expansion completed successfully.

WARNING: If the virtual disk is partitioned, you must use a third-party
utility in the virtual machine to expand the size of the
partitions. For more information, see:
http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1647
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