Re: New vm-image size is much smaller than previos

> On Fri, May 3, 2019, 7:42 PM bob prohaska <fbsd_at_www.zefox.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 11:06:15AM -0700, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > > -- Start of PGP signed section.
> > > > On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 10:12:58AM -0700, Enji Cooper wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > On May 3, 2019, at 9:57 AM, Alan Somers <asomers_at_FreeBSD.org>
> > wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > See r346959.  Before first boot, you should expand the image up to
> > > > > > whatever size you want.  growfs(8) will automatically expand the
> > file
> > > > > > system.
> > > > > > -Alan
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 10:32 AM David Boyd <David.Boyd49_at_twc.com>
> > wrote:
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> The vm-image for 13.0-CURRENT
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>         FreeBSD-13.0-CURRENT-amd64-20190503-r347033.vmdk
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> is only 4.0 GB in size.  Previous images were about 31.0 GB.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> This smaller image doesn't leave much room to add packages and
> > other
> > > > > >> customizations.
> > > > >
> > > > > This probably deserves a release note.
> > > >
> > > > It will certainly be mentioned in the 11.3 release notes.
> > >
> > > And those running head snapshots without reading commit messages
> > > are likely to have lots of foot shooting.
> > >
> > > > Glen
> > > --
> > > Rod Grimes
> > rgrimes_at_freebsd.org
> >
> > At the risk of being branded a wishful thinker, a firstboot script that
> > asked the user for some configuration information would be a great help
> > to both new and experienced foot-shooters. I'm thinking of Raspberry Pi,
> > but perhaps it applies to non-embedded platforms also.
> >
> 
> That's not a bad idea... we could press bsdinstall into service for that
> perhaps... we already expand the partition / filesystem to match the media
> size...

As asommers already pointed out a) we already do the for real media
like on the rasberry pi's, etc all in that on first boot they do a
growfs to fill the real media up with the file system.

That does not work for a VM, as it is the host that has to increase
the size of the file so that the growfs (which IS already in these
images) can do its jobs.

What we should do is document the FreeBSD VM images are shipped
very small, but have this autogrow capability, and that a user
wanting say a 40G VM should simply expand the file to the proper
larger size via truncate -s 40G filename before starting the guest,
the guest well automagically do the right thing via growfs on
first boot.

> > The original FreeBSD install program (the one by Jordan Hubbard) did a
"original" would be mine, the second gen would by jkh,

> > very serviceable job. Could it (the user interface) be resurrected?
> >
> 
> Unlikely. It's too far bit rotted these days. It was extremely tailored to
> the i386 env, and a lot has changed since we retired it.
> 
> This is an interesting idea. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to
> prototype.

It already is done, just needs a documentation cleanup.

> Warner
> 
> Thanks for reading,
> >
> > bob prohaska
-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes_at_freebsd.org