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Increase disk size of a VirtualBox Linux guest

VirtualBox

One possible way to increase the disk size of a VirtualBox Linux guest:

  • Stop the virtual machine
  • In VirtualBox menu, select File > Tools > Virtual Media Manager...
  • In the Hard disks tab, Select the virtual machine hard disk. The virtual machine can be deduced from the directory path displayed when clicking on a given hard disk
  • Increase the size
  • Click on the Apply button
  • Download a bootable gparted ISO image from here (at the time of writing: gparted-live-1.6.0-3-amd64.iso)
  • Check the checksum
  • Modify the settings of the virtual machine so that it boots on the gparted ISO image: add the image as an optical drive, check Live CD/DVD, and check that the boot order will make the machine boot on the optical drive
  • Start the Virtual Machine. It starts gparted
  • Using gparted, resize the relevant partition
  • Quit gparted, exit
  • Remove the optical drive from the virtual drive, in Settings > Storage
  • Restart the virtual machine