Bug#910143: cloud.debian.org: Increase vagrant disk size

[Ulf Jaenicke-Roessler]

Package: cloud.debian.org
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Vagrant base boxes apparently use a maximum disk size of 10G.
OTOH the chosen format of the virtual disks does not allow to increase the size (VBoxManage refuses to do so).

It's probably not helpful to point out in detail why *WE* would need a larger HD, but I could do so if you need arguments.

But in general, 10G is not that large anymore today. And there's probably no real reason to keep it, since the HardDisk
seems to grow dynamically as needed anyway.

I would suggest to increase the size to 20G. While doing that, maybe there's a way to change the format of VHD,
such that anyone that needs an even larger HD may do that.

Best regards
Ulf


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.5
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-7-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

[Emmanuel Kasper]

Post by Ulf Jaenicke-Roessler
Vagrant base boxes apparently use a maximum disk size of 10G.

OTOH the chosen format of the virtual disks does not allow to increase
the size (VBoxManage refuses to do so).

yes true. The reason is that during the build process, we convert the
raw disk image produced by packer to vmdk. Vmdk is kind of standardized,
whihc allows the generated image, coupled with the appropriate image, to
be in theory also imported by other hypervisors (vmware, Proxmox)

I see here a couple of solution:
* you can convert using virtualbox the vmdk disk image to vdi, the
native virtualbox disk format, which can enlarged ( remember you need to
extend partitions and FS in the disk iamge too )

We could eventually change the build system to vdi but we would need to
check that:
a) a qemu-img vdi disk image works properly in virtualbox
b) an ovf export with a VDI disk image is properly imported in virtualbox
c) the build pipeline is adapted so it generates vdi disk images

if you can test a) I could take care of b) and c)

BTW what kind of software are you installing in the VM ?
I would have expected the shared /vagrant directory to host most of the
software depency

[Ulf Jaenicke-Roessler]

Hi,

I wonder if it's really so useful to be prepared like this for a change
of hypervisor.

Of course, it's a nice feature, but you trade in at least this
disadvantage of not being able to resize the virtual disk out-of-the-box
(ie, without converting it again, which makes it a bit pointless to use
Vagrant because it's somewhat "external" to it.). OTOH, VirtualBox could
export virtual appliances itself, if needed.

Unfortunately I cannot test with qemu :-( for some time - sorry!

So what software I am using? Well - it's a docker registry and a
node/npm registry. The problem is, it's running in VirtualBox on
Windows. /vagrant, as well as additional data directories are very
useful, but only help a bit. It became unsuitable as soon as there had
to be some changes in ownership or file access mode, and of course if
there are (symbolic) links. VirtualBox/NTFS doesn't map these features
correctly.

Best regards
Ulf