How can I create a vagrant virtualbox VM with a storage size of more than 8GB?

I've been trying all day to create a vagrant centos box with more than 8GB. It would be nice to know how to make my existing virtual disk bigger, but I would definitely settle for creating a completely blank fresh machine with a configurable size.

I've tried various things, but these instructions seemed most promising: https://gist.github.com/christopher-hopper/9755310

After doing step 15, I realized I don't have any volume groups. Others commented that they didn't have volume groups and could stop after step 9. A df shows that I still only have an 8GB disk even tho it shows a 39GB vdi in virtualbox manager.

My host machine is windows 8.1.

B T

Posted 2014-10-05T07:39:07.097

Reputation: 603

I think I likely need to extend the partition, but I can't unmount it since its the main partition.. – B T – 2014-10-05T08:03:36.877

Answers

I've been faced with this situation myself. The problem isn't resizing the virtual disk (*) but rather resizing the root partition & the file system on the virtual disk. Resizing a mounted file system or growing a live partition at runtime is not possible.

I solved the problem by booting the vm from a Ubuntu LiveCD (in try me mode). I managed this by attaching the ubuntu.iso as a CDROM to the vm & pressing F12 while the vm was booting. With that I had access to a boot menu & could boot from the LiveCD.

Using gparted (**)I could resize the root partition. I don't remember how I resized the file system, probably using resize2fs. After that I detached the LiveCD & booted from the virtual disk.

(*) Find the UUID using VBoxManage list -l hdds & resize the disk using VBoxManage modifyhd UUID --resize bytes ( UUID looks something like this bcc0f77e-536a-4b95-825f-79efada3442c)

(**) gparted should be installed, if not install it with sudo apt-get install gparted

Hope this was helpful.

Eamonn Travers

Posted 2014-10-05T07:39:07.097

Reputation: 496

When I try to boot from a CD iso, vagrant up gives me connection timeouts. I added the CD under the SATA controller alongside the virtual hard drive, I tried checking Live and also leaving it unchecked. My system boot order has CD first. Any idea what could be going wrong? – B T – 2014-10-05T18:39:56.030

Hi. I wrote my answer from memory so I wanted to make sure that I had everything right. I attached the iso as a CDROM or more correctly as the only CDROM & booted from it. I 've tried it out again & it works just fine. Mind you I'm not using vagrant, just VirtualBox. Have you tried a different iso. Maybe not a liveCD but rather a simple rescue CD like OpenSuSE? – Eamonn Travers – 2014-10-06T10:07:16.433

Ah, yeah, I definitely need to boot from VirtualBox and not vagrant, you're right. I'll have to try this again later, since I've already worked around my issue another way (the answer I posted) – B T – 2014-10-06T19:58:31.943

This is also not ideal, but I successfully created a vagrant base box from scratch using these instructions:

See here: http://thornelabs.net/2013/11/11/create-a-centos-6-vagrant-base-box-from-scratch-using-virtualbox.html
- Make sure to go to the Network tab and change the Adapter type (in Advanced) to "Paravirtualized Network (virtio-net)"
- Also remember to set the password for the vagrant user
  - '''passwd vagrant'''
- Make sure to install the guest additions before you package the instance into a vagrant box
  - You have to mount the CD after you reboot the machine (so do it as late as possible instead of as the first step)

It won't help you increase the size of your current disk, but it will help you create boxes with larger initial sizes.

B T

Posted 2014-10-05T07:39:07.097

Reputation: 603