Howto: Resize Xen Loop Disk Image
Win4lin, KVM, QEMU, Virtualbox and Xen are all widely used technologies, used in virtual servers. Fairly often a virtual server run from within a loop filesystem and generally start with a fairly small file (1GB is big for a normal file, but not when it is pretending to be an entire filesystem!)
However things often grow over time.
Here is a nice simple procedure for increasing the size of a loop filesystem, if the filesystem is ext2 or ext3 (the procedure should work for ext4 too, but I havn’t tested it yet)
1. Stop the virtual server that is using the loop filesystem
2. Add some extra space to your loop filesystem file
# dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024k count=1024 >> loop_image_file
This adds 1GB to the end of a file called loop_image_file (make sure to use the append output redirector >> not a single >, otherwise you’ll have an empty 1GB file!)
3. Force a check on the resized/increased filesystem
# e2fsck -f loop_image_file
4. Resize the filesystem within the loop filesystem file
# resize2fs loop_image_file
5. Start the virtual server again
Related posts:
- Migrate existing Ext3 filesystems to Ext4
- Howto: How to Reset the MySQL Root Password
- Xen Howto: Install Windows
- How to mount bin / cue image files in Linux
- Howto Install Windows XP / Vista on Xen
- How to Mount a Remote Filesystem Using SSH and sshfs
- Importing / Exporting Virtual Disk Images with Virtual Box
- Ubuntu Howto: Install Xen
- Ubuntu Server Edition JeOS
- Installing Xen on Debian Etch 4.0
