VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘gparted’ Category

If you’ve used any of VMware’s products you’ve probably been frustrated by trying to boot a VM from CD. Not when you install the OS, but after the VM has been operating. For example when you need to grow the size of the virtual disk and you try to boot the VM from the GParted LiveCD. The VM’s BIOS is set to boot from disk first, so you need to change the boot device order. The problem is that the boot process is so fast it seems you have less than a second to hit F2 and enter Setup, and you have to be really quick with your mouse getting the cursor inside the VM. I bet you never thought you could get aggravated over a server booting too fast! Here’s the two methods I know of to catch the VM during boot so you can enter Setup.

The first method is to Read the rest of this entry »

When I need to increase the size of a virtual disk (.vmdk) I use the console command vmkfstools and the Gparted LiveCD. If you did not know, Gparted is an open source Partition Magic Alternative.

Here’s how I grow a VM’s disk. These steps are for a Windows VM. They should work for any OS, however. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a VM running on the free VMware Server or VMware Workstation that is running out of disk space then you can use the command line tool vmware-vdiskmanager to grow the virtual disk. Then use the Gparted LiveCD to grow the existing partition to the new disk size. Here are the steps: Read the rest of this entry »