Container using all disk space?

[ga_lewis]

Hi all

Sorry new to proxmox question. Really hoping someone can please help!!

Background: I've set up a proxmox containter running a Turnkey fileserver with that provides a samba window file share to a 1.8TB media drive on Proxmox.

The problem: The media drive is showing and full and remains full even after I delete a bunch of large media files.

I have no idea why this is happening??? I did notice proxmox shows the fileserver container (vm-300) on the Media Drive as using 2TB (screenshot below). Does this have anything to do with it? Thank you for any pointers or directions on how to provide more info to help resolve this!!

 

[ubu]

You are using a raw file as disk image, even when empty it uses the full space.
A raw image is like a bitwise copy of a disk, if it is empty it is basically a big file full of zeros.
Unfortunatly on Directory Storage Containers ONLY support raw image files. These also do not offer snapshots.
VMs can use qcow2 or other formats beside raw.

I recommend installing Proxmox on zfs (if not using ceph in a cluster), but you could also use lvm.

 

[ga_lewis]

You are using a raw file as disk image, even when empty it uses the full space.
A raw image is like a bitwise copy of a disk, if it is empty it is basically a big file full of zeros.
Unfortunatly on Directory Storage Containers ONLY support raw image files. These also do not offer snapshots.
VMs can use qcow2 or other formats beside raw.

I recommend installing Proxmox on zfs (if not using ceph in a cluster), but you could also use lvm.

Thank you!

I don't quite understand. The media drive filled up as I added files. If the raw image is a "bitwise copy and even when empty it is a big file full of zeros" how come it filled up as I added files to it?

If I were to delete the container and rebuild it as a VM with qcow2 othe other format would that solve my problem?

To use ZFS do I need to wipe proxmox and reinstall everything from scratch? Can I backup and restore my VMs? .... and Containerrs?

 

[ubu]

Then it was created a sparse file, in a sparse file instead of a million zeros being written Linux will write "here come a million 0"
You see the difference with ls -l file and du file.
ls will show you the nominal size, du the real size on disk.
But the raw file will not shrink