Re: [Xen-users] shrink or grow disk image?

[Jonathan Ervine <jervine@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 30 April 2008 03:21:20 James Pifer wrote:
> I have installations of sles for 64 and 32 bit in img files. I can
> copy the img file, create a new domU, adjust the networking as
> needed, and I have a new server up and ready to be configured.
>
> Problem is my img file is a lot bigger than needed for some uses. Is
> there a way to shrink an img file? Or, if I create a new "template"
> server that is smaller, can the img file be grown when needed?

Growing image files is easy enough - you simply create another blank one 
and then cat it to the original one. I've done this a few times - 
although I'd still recommend that you do this on a backup of the 
original image file :-) using image files isn't the best for 
performance- you should look at using LVM and setting up individual 
volumes for your VMs.

Shrinking I'm not so sure about... I don't think you can shrink an image 
file - however you could create a (smaller) new one, and copy the 
contents of the larger used one to the new one. Combinations of dd and 
lomount are probably useful for this...

Jon

_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users