[ale] LVM2 & VirtualBox Help.

[Ed Cashin]

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 11:11 AM, Jack Schneider <puck at dp-indexing.com> wrote:
...
> Hi, Ed  Thanks for reply..
>
> When I installed VirtualBox it by default, as I recall from from 2007,
> loaded the VM disks *.vdi into my /home/jack/.Vbox  directory. I have
> now begun to exceed the fixed file sizes into which the VM s were
> installed and also blown up my home directory.   I have under Raid1 some
> LVM partitions set aside for the VMs.  I want (need to) move the
> VM *.vdi and also to do a VBOX register to the LVMs.  Per VBOX docs .vdi
> must be moved as .vmdk files... and use the VboxManage clonehd tool. I
> don't seem to be able to do that...  8-(  I may have in trying, made a
> mess..
>
> I can generate lvdisplay  & other outputs to a
> pastebin.com or such page, to give you a longer list.

Hmm.  In a case like this I often use a symlink.  I wonder whether
that would work in this case.  In the example below, assume the new
storage you want to use is mounted on /mnt/big and your username
is "jack".  You'd do this without virtualbox running.

  sudo mkdir /mnt/big/jack
  sudo chown jack /mnt/big/jack
  rsync -a ~/.Vbox /mnt/big/jack
  cd
  mv .Vbox .Vbox.orig
  ln -s ../../mnt/big/jack/.Vbox

(Now make sure everything's the way you want it, then later at
leisure, do ...)

  rm -rf ~/.Vbox.orig

Most UNIX-ish software knows symlinks are used this way, but I
don't know whether VirtualBox really cares what the block device
underlying the filesystem is or not.  I don't know why it would.  And
if it doesn't, your symlink shouldn't make any difference to VBox.

I wonder why the docs want you to move stuff as vmdk files.  One
reason I can think of would be that it's a cross-platform format,
whereas the other files are system-specific (but not necessarily
block device specific.)  I'm not going to google about it, though.  :)

-- 
  Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net>
  http://noserose.net/e/
  http://www.coraid.com/