Comments on: How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM And Free Up Space For Your Hard Disk

By: Damien Oh

Damien Oh — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:13:23 +0000

I think your method is much better than mine. This method didn't come across my mind until you mention it now. Thanks for sharing.

By: Pieter Humphrey

Pieter Humphrey — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:39:19 +0000

it's likely user error, as I am new to linux, but either the
mount -n -o remount,ro -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /
or zerofree utlity completely screwed up my ext3 files system. The system boots, but everytime I try to create a file more than a few MB, it freezes, and is unable to shutdown. It errors saying something about how the filesystem is read only, but the OS level utilities tells me the two filesystems are read-write. It completely toasted an image I was working on for 2 days and had to rebuild from scratch.
A colleague suggested I skip the whole complex boot from iso process as you describe, and simply do a
dd if=/dev/zero of=/bigemptyfile
where //bigemptyfile will create a file of zeros as large as the available free space in your virtual HD. Then delete the file, shutdown the guest OS, run the vboxmanage compact utility, and export the appliance. I got a 10GB worth of virtual disk to shrink to 2.5 GB that way. Much less risky than the “boot in recovery mode” procedure that you describe.

By: Full of Questions

Full of Questions — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 07:08:07 +0000

I'm having trouble with the remount. I type
mount -n -o remount,ro -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /

and I get back
mount: / is busy

what am i doing wrong? Another question, how do I know if I should use ext2 or ext3?

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By: VirtualBox – Space Problem? | Eyedea Lab

VirtualBox – Space Problem? | Eyedea Lab — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 14:29:52 +0000

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By: Shrinking a Dynamic VirtualBox Disk Image | The Linux Daily

Shrinking a Dynamic VirtualBox Disk Image | The Linux Daily — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:50:14 +0000

[...] Guides: http://maketecheasier.com/shrink-your-virtualbox-vm/2009/04/06 — Keep in mind that zerofree does in fact support ext4 (I think this article is a tiny bit [...]

By: Shinking a Dynamic VirtualBox Disk Image | Derek Hildreth's Blog

Shinking a Dynamic VirtualBox Disk Image | Derek Hildreth's Blog — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:02:39 +0000

[...] Guides: http://maketecheasier.com/shrink-your-virtualbox-vm/2009/04/06 — Keep in mind that zerofree does in fact support ext4 (I think this article is a tiny bit [...]

By: Manoel Campos

Manoel Campos — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:15:37 +0000

In Linux version of VirtualBox 3.x, the command is VBoxManage instead VboxManage (note the uppercase B)

By: Manoel Campos

Manoel Campos — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:15:00 +0000

In Linux version of VirtualBox 3.x, the command is VBoxManage instead VboxManage (note the uppercase B)

By: Cómo recuperar el espacio tomado por los discos de expansión dinámica de VirtualBox « AI-Dev

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:29:30 +0000

[...] How To Shrink Your Virtualbox VM And Free Up Space For Your Hard Disk [...]

By: Cliff

Cliff — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:53:06 +0000

similar command works with Ubuntu 9.04 host using VBox 3.0.4.

VBoxManage modifyhd –compact /path/to/your/VM.vdi

By: Cliff

Cliff — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:53:00 +0000

similar command works with Ubuntu 9.04 host using VBox 3.0.4.

VBoxManage modifyhd –compact /path/to/your/VM.vdi

By: Lance Wig

Lance Wig — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:51:15 +0000

Great and useful tutorial. Thank You. I was able to get the VboxManage modifyvdi command (with lowercase b) to work fine on Mac OS X Leopard with VB 2.2.4 http://bit.ly/yHk1t

By: Lance Wig

Lance Wig — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:51:00 +0000

Great and useful tutorial. Thank You. I was able to get the VboxManage modifyvdi command (with lowercase b) to work fine on Mac OS X Leopard with VB 2.2.4 http://bit.ly/yHk1t

By: Conor

Conor — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:03:28 +0000

the smae command should work on a Mac host. except has slightly renamed switches. just open up a terminal windows and run the command.
VboxManage modifyhd /path/to/your/VM.vdi –compact

By: Conor

Conor — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:03:00 +0000

the smae command should work on a Mac host. except has slightly renamed switches. just open up a terminal windows and run the command.
VboxManage modifyhd /path/to/your/VM.vdi –compact

By: john

john — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:13:52 +0000

The command “VBoxManage modifyvdi /path/to/your/VM.vdi compact” works with version 2.2.4. Just make sure you type VBoxManage instead of VboxManage.

By: john

john — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:13:00 +0000

The command “VBoxManage modifyvdi /path/to/your/VM.vdi compact” works with version 2.2.4. Just make sure you type VBoxManage instead of VboxManage.

By: Damien

Damien — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:23:53 +0000

Theoretically, the method is the same for Mac OSX users, but I haven’t give it a test yet, so I can’t confirm whether the above method works in OSX or not.

I will update again as soon as I have tested it out. :)

By: Damien

Damien — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:23:00 +0000

Theoretically, the method is the same for Mac OSX users, but I haven’t give it a test yet, so I can’t confirm whether the above method works in OSX or not.

I will update again as soon as I have tested it out. :)