Firstly I would like to thank the Proxmox PVE staff for their excellent and tireless work in providing, such a robust system (been using for about a year now) - it just rocks!
Secondly thanks to the staff and all contributors for such an excellent forum platform. It is possibly one of the most useful - if not THE best - in the IT world! Kudos to all!
Recently I have felt that I should return something (small but possibly useful) to the community. I decided to share my notes that I have used on one of my projects.
Background: I have an old Laptop/Netbook from almost 20 years ago that runs Windows XP 32 bit (when it decides to turn on & waiting a few minutes to boot - I believe its one of the original Atom chips!).
My problem is I have many much-needed documents on it - that use a dedicated program within that environment, that won't run elsewhere.
What I did - Booted up above Laptop/Netbook with a live Linux USB (it has no cd/dvd) and used Linux DD to save a complete block raw image of its HD - this took a LONG time on my HD!
After that I spun up a new VM in Proxmox PVE using this image as its HD (referred in this post as VM <VMID> ), got everything working (not very hard) -
[Had to re-authenticate Windows XP by telephone - because of hardware changes!)
The Windows XP VM <VMID> now boots up in second/s - probably faster than the laptop/netbook by about a factor of 100x! THANKS PROXMOX PVE!!!
However after cleaning up the running Windows XP by deleting unnecessary files, I quickly realized I was using about 30% of the actual disk space (150GB).
Since I like to backup the Windows XP image often, this massive file is quite unnecessary, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. Here is the procedure. YMMV.
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USE AT YOUR OWN RISK - BACKUP AND THEN BACKUP!
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How to: Shrink Windows XP (C: Boot Drive) NTFS image.raw drive (for VM <VMID> on Proxmox)
1. Defragment HD (from running within) Windows XP VM <VMID> & shutdown VM
2. First Backup the original image (in tmux since this can be a lengthy process):
3. Add a SystemRescueCd CD/DVD disc image file (iso) to VM <VMID> and make sure it appears in VM <VMID> boot options
4. Start VM <VMID> by pressing ESC to enter SystemRescueCD GUI boot
5. Run Gparted (and apply changes!) to dev/path/to/WindowsXP/partition
Resize accordingly ONLY AT THE END OF PARTITION - IN FREE SPACE AREA
(I also left a bit of available space).
6. Reboot VM <VMID> to Windows XP - chkdsk was automatically run because of partition change. I rebooted again for software changes.
7. Check everything works. Your C: drive should now only show the new shrinked size.
8. Shutdown Windows XP VM <VMID>
9. In Proxmox host SSH (or shell from GUI):
10. Find from above, the End number of the boot partition - in example above thats image.raw2 "YYYYYYYYY" and copy this number as follows:
11. Run this to tell Proxmox PVE of changed file (no changes will yet be made):
12. Check output looks OK, and then run this to make changes:
That's it you should be done - you will now see that the image file has shrunk accordingly.
I believe it also boots faster!
Enjoy YMMV
AND again:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK - BACKUP AND THEN BACKUP!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secondly thanks to the staff and all contributors for such an excellent forum platform. It is possibly one of the most useful - if not THE best - in the IT world! Kudos to all!
Recently I have felt that I should return something (small but possibly useful) to the community. I decided to share my notes that I have used on one of my projects.
Background: I have an old Laptop/Netbook from almost 20 years ago that runs Windows XP 32 bit (when it decides to turn on & waiting a few minutes to boot - I believe its one of the original Atom chips!).
My problem is I have many much-needed documents on it - that use a dedicated program within that environment, that won't run elsewhere.
What I did - Booted up above Laptop/Netbook with a live Linux USB (it has no cd/dvd) and used Linux DD to save a complete block raw image of its HD - this took a LONG time on my HD!
After that I spun up a new VM in Proxmox PVE using this image as its HD (referred in this post as VM <VMID> ), got everything working (not very hard) -
[Had to re-authenticate Windows XP by telephone - because of hardware changes!)
The Windows XP VM <VMID> now boots up in second/s - probably faster than the laptop/netbook by about a factor of 100x! THANKS PROXMOX PVE!!!
However after cleaning up the running Windows XP by deleting unnecessary files, I quickly realized I was using about 30% of the actual disk space (150GB).
Since I like to backup the Windows XP image often, this massive file is quite unnecessary, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. Here is the procedure. YMMV.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK - BACKUP AND THEN BACKUP!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How to: Shrink Windows XP (C: Boot Drive) NTFS image.raw drive (for VM <VMID> on Proxmox)
1. Defragment HD (from running within) Windows XP VM <VMID> & shutdown VM
2. First Backup the original image (in tmux since this can be a lengthy process):
Code:
tmux
cp /path/to/location/images/<VMID>/image.raw /path/to/backup/location/image.raw3. Add a SystemRescueCd CD/DVD disc image file (iso) to VM <VMID> and make sure it appears in VM <VMID> boot options
4. Start VM <VMID> by pressing ESC to enter SystemRescueCD GUI boot
5. Run Gparted (and apply changes!) to dev/path/to/WindowsXP/partition
Resize accordingly ONLY AT THE END OF PARTITION - IN FREE SPACE AREA
(I also left a bit of available space).
6. Reboot VM <VMID> to Windows XP - chkdsk was automatically run because of partition change. I rebooted again for software changes.
7. Check everything works. Your C: drive should now only show the new shrinked size.
8. Shutdown Windows XP VM <VMID>
9. In Proxmox host SSH (or shell from GUI):
Code:
fdisk -l '/path/to/location/images/<VMID>/image.raw'
Disk /path/to/location/images/<VMID>/image.raw: xxx.xx GiB, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx bytes, xxxxxxxxxx sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/path/to/location/images/<VMID>/image.raw1 xx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx x.xG xx xxxxxxxx
/path/to/location/images/<VMID>/image.raw2 * xxxxxxxx YYYYYYYYY xxxxxxxxx xxx.xG x HPFS/NTFS/exFAT10. Find from above, the End number of the boot partition - in example above thats image.raw2 "YYYYYYYYY" and copy this number as follows:
Code:
truncate --size=$[(YYYYYYYYY+1)*512] '/path/to/location/images/<VMID>/image.raw'11. Run this to tell Proxmox PVE of changed file (no changes will yet be made):
Code:
qm rescan --vmid <VMID> --dryrun12. Check output looks OK, and then run this to make changes:
Code:
qm rescan --vmid <VMID>That's it you should be done - you will now see that the image file has shrunk accordingly.
I believe it also boots faster!
Enjoy YMMV
AND again:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
USE AT YOUR OWN RISK - BACKUP AND THEN BACKUP!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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