File systems shrink once I rebooted.

[drkirkby]

I've set up Mint 9.0 as a virtual machine in VirtualBox 3.1.6 on a workstation that runs OpenSolaris as the host operating system.

i.e.

host OS = OpenSolaris 06/2009
guest OS = Mint Linux 9.0
VirtualBox 3.1.6

When installing the OS, I chose a disk size of about 50 GB for Mint. After installing Mint, df shows the root file system had around 50 GB free. But once I rebooted, I see:

Code: Select all

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
aufs                 1005M  7.4M  998M   1% /
none                 1000M  232K 1000M   1% /dev
/dev/sr0              675M  675M     0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0            659M  659M     0 100% /rofs
none                 1005M  144K 1005M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                1005M   28K 1005M   1% /tmp
none                 1005M   92K 1005M   1% /var/run
none                 1005M     0 1005M   0% /var/lock
none                 1005M     0 1005M   0% /lib/init/rw

In other words, as soon as I rebooted, the size of the file system dropped from around 50 GB to 1 GB. So what's happened to the other 49 GB?

I've come across real Unix systems like AIX and HP-UX where one has to grow the partition size. Is it the same in Mint?

The host, which is a quad core Sun Ultra 27 workstatin machine has about 800 GB of space free.

Dave

[Pierre]

in Vbox, you can specify if the virtual hdd size is Fixed or is expandable in size.
& I think that the default is expandable ...

which, in reality, means that the virtual drive is only as big as the data/o/s files are in actual size.
& as you add, more files, the virtual size grows to accommodate the extra stuff, up to the maximum that you set.

whereas, with the 1st option, the virtual size remains at the fixed <maximum> size.

[drkirkby]

in Vbox, you can specify if the virtual hdd size is Fixed or is expandable in size.
& I think that the default is expandable ...

which, in reality, means that the virtual drive is only as big as the data/o/s files are in actual size.
& as you add, more files, the virtual size grows to accommodate the extra stuff, up to the maximum that you set.

whereas, with the 1st option, the virtual size remains at the fixed <maximum> size.

I did choose expandable, rather than fixed. But nomally that means the OS sees the size as whatever one set it at - which was the case until I rebooted.

This is the second time I installed Mont. The first time the file system filled up very quickly, so it does not appear to expand in the way it does if I install Debian, XP or Solaris. All those systems show the hard disk as being the size I created it, which is typically 50 GB.

I'd rather not waste disk space using fixed partitions if it can be avoided. It certainly can for Debian.