\n\tUsing my VirtualBox linux machines (KaliLinux in my case) together with applying a couple of updates brought a problem, where the VB machine starts run out of disk space and I'm not able to update neither extend the system. This could be an often problem once we are trying to save some host system hard disk space using a small initial size of virtual machine disk partitions (12GB here).<\/p>\n
\n\tThe disk file cmd (df) reports:<\/p>\n
\r\nroot@kali:~# df -h\r\nFilesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on\r\nrootfs 12G 11G 0G 100<\/span>% \/\r\n...<\/pre>\n\n\t <\/div>\n\n\tIn this case there are several solutions available. We should either add a new virtual vdi drive, mount it inside of linux and move some folders on it. Or as the second option, we should extend the size of the main virtual disk.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe first case is from my point of view more suitable for situations where for example our personal \/home folders become too big. However searching through my distro I see that the biggest folders are system folders<\/p>\n
\r\ndu -sh \/*<\/span><\/strong>\r\n...\r\n0 <\/span>\/sys\r\n36K <\/span>\/tmp\r\n9.0G <\/span><\/span>\/usr<\/span>\r\n356M <\/span>\/var\r\n0 <\/span>\/vmlinuz<\/pre>\n\n\r\nroot@kali:~# du -sh \/usr\/* | grep G\r\n2.0G <\/span>\/usr\/lib\r\n6.6G <\/span>\/usr\/share<\/pre>\n\n\t\tThis seems bigger linux system administration challenge and therefore the second option looks like less time consuming.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tSearching the web we may find several nice tutorials, as for example Resize a VirtualBox guest Linux VDI Disk under Windows Host<\/a> and Resizing VirtualBox and Linux Partitions with GParted<\/a>. Both are using the VBoxManage <\/strong>tool together with the modifyhd <\/strong>and —resize<\/strong> switch defining the new size of the disk partition. Then we have to use some disk manager (the fdisk command line tool or the GParted GUI tool) to manage a new unallocated disk space.<\/p>\n\n\t\tHowever, following decribed steps I've got following error:<\/p>\n
\r\nc:\\Program Files\\Oracle\\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe modifyhd D:\\VirtualBox\\KaliLinux\\KaliLinux.vdi --resize 20480\r\n0%...\r\nProgress state: VBOX_E_NOT_SUPPORTED\r\nVBoxManage.exe: error: Resize hard disk operation for this format is not implemented yet!<\/span><\/pre>\n\n\t\t <\/div>\n\n\t\tThe error, I think, is generated because my initial vdi file (KaliLinux.vdi) was created as a fixed size storage and not as a dynamically allocated. <\/p>\n
\n\t\tOne of working solutions is following: <\/p>\n
\n\t\t1) Create a new linux machine with a new and bigger vdi storage (20GB in my case)<\/p>\n
\n\t\t2) Use vboxmanage to clone the old vdi image to a new, just created, one<\/p>\n
\r\nVBoxManage.exe clonehd <\/span>OLD.vdii NEW_BIG.vdi --existing<\/span><\/span><\/pre>\n\n\t\tin my case <\/p>\n
\r\nc:\\Program Files\\Oracle\\VirtualBox>VBoxManage.exe clonehd<\/span><\/strong> D:\\VirtualBox\\KaliLinux\\KaliLinux.vdi D:\\VirtualBox\\KaliLinux\\KaliLinux2.vdi --existing<\/span>\r\n0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%\r\n\r\nClone hard disk created in format 'VDI'. UUID: 4983cdb9-1fd6-42a1-a8a3-15fb2bd9c11b<\/pre>\n\n\t\t3) Booting a new machine with cloned disk is working, but shows that the system is still using the same size<\/p>\n
\r\nroot@kali:~# df -h\r\nFilesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on\r\nrootfs 12G 11G 0G 100% \/\r\n...<\/pre>\n\n\t\tso we have to manage already created but still unallocated disk space. To do that we should use fdisk or as a windows user, some GUI based tool. As a right option seems to be GParted – A partition editor to graphically manage disk partitions<\/a>.<\/p>\n