Root Image

Qubes OS 3.2: Resize fedora-23 TemplateVM Root Image 1

 in GNU/Linux  tagged fedora-23 / qubes / Qubes OS 3.2 / qubes-os / resize / Root Image / root.img / TemplateVM by

Recently, we needed to increase the size of the root image for the fedora-23 TemplateVM.
We had to do this as we wanted to install in /opt a few IDEs, including android-studio which takes a lot of space when accompanied by the Android SDK.

Following the excellent guide at https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/resize-root-disk-image/, we did the following:

  1. Made sure that the fedora-23 TemplateVM and all VMs based on that template were shut down.
    This included stopping the sys-firewall and sys-net VMs as well (in this order).
  2. Then, in the VM Settings window at the Basic tab for the fedora-23 TemplateVM, we disabled the networking by selecting none on the NetVM: drop-down list and pressed OK to apply the settings changes.
  3. Following, in dom0 Terminal Emulator we run the following command:
    truncate -s 40G /var/lib/qubes/vm-templates/fedora-23/root.img;
  4. Afterwards we started the fedora-23 TemplateVM and run the following in the terminal:
    sudo resize2fs /dev/mapper/dmroot;
    Please note that if your output is Nothing to do! then most likely you forgot a VM that is based on the fedora-23 TemplateVM running. Normally your screen should print something along the lines of Resizing the filesystem...
  5. Next, we shut down the fedora-23 TemplateVM, and went to the VM Settings window to enable networking by selecting whatever we had there before (for us it was default (sys-firewall)).
  6. Finally, we could start using our VMs, their root.img were of the new extended size.