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Re: CentOS 5.5 in VMware Wkstn 7.1.3 - SOLVED




On Mon, 2011-02-07 at 08:34 -0600, Robert G. (Doc) Savage wrote: 
> On Sun, 2011-02-06 at 23:48 -0600, Nathaniel R. Reindl wrote:
> > On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 12:49 AM, Robert G. (Doc) Savage
> > <dsavage@peaknet.net> wrote:
> > > Has anyone here logged any recent installation time with CentOS 5.5 under
> > > VMware/W? After three troubled attempts I discovered that by default it's
> > > allocating far more disk space to /home than to / -- so much so that I can't
> > > install OpenOffice, Java, or anything else requiring a significant amount of
> > > space.
> > 
> > My CentOS 5.5 burns are usually done with a ks.cfg that allocates a
> > couple of logical volumes within 15GB no matter the size of the
> > underlying physical volume.  After that, I'm able to
> > lvresize+e2resizefs to my heart's content.  You might want to
> > investigate doing something similar to this anyway given what I'm
> > reading in the rest of this thread.
> > 
> > (In an unrelated tangent, who's waiting for CentOS 6?)
> 
> Nate,
> 
> (Answered your last question separately.)
> 
> The trouble I'm having is the ruthless way CentOS 5.5 is being installed
> under VMware Workstation 7.1.3. I get no opportunity to review and
> change the partitioning scheme. I suspect the culprit is VMware
> Workstation. It detects CentOS 5.5 64-bit right off the bat, and asks no
> questions after that. I think it has a built-in kickstart that allocates
> a 25GB virtual disk as follows:
> 
>         # fdisk -l /dev/sda
>         
>         Disk /dev/sda: 26.8 GB, 26843545600 bytes
>         255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3263 cylinders
>         Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>         
>            Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>         /dev/sda1   *           1           6       48163+  83  Linux
>         /dev/sda2               7         515     4088542+  83  Linux
>         /dev/sda3             516         772     2064352+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
>         /dev/sda4             773        3263    20008957+   5  Extended
>         /dev/sda5             773        3263    20008926   83  Linux
> 
>         # df -h
>         Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>         /dev/sda2             3.8G  2.9G  727M  81% /
>         /dev/sda5              19G  173M   18G   1% /home
>         /dev/sda1              46M   17M   27M  40% /boot
>         tmpfs                 502M     0  502M   0% /dev/shm
>         /dev/hdc              4.1G  4.1G     0 100% /media/CentOS_5.5_Final
>         
> I think the most direct way to fix this would be to log in as root,
> create a "/home-temp", move everything now in /home over, umount /home,
> run fdisk to delete /dev/sda4 and /dev/sda5, then grow /dev/sda2 to the
> max and run e2resizefs on /.
> 
> It's the grow and resize steps I've never done. What would be the tools
> and syntaxes to do that?

All,

I've tracked down the root cause of the problem, and it's a stupid error
in VMware 7.1.3's "easy" install method. It appears to use a brain-dead
partitioning scheme in a kickstart file that gives the almost all of the
virtual machine's disk space to the /home partition.

The way to get around that bad kickstart is to select an early option to
prepare the virtual disk now, then install the OS "later". This option
gives back the familiar option to view and alter partitions.

The only downside of this work-around, if you could call it that, is
that you must do a post-install of VMware Tools manually from a tarball.
In the "easy" method VMware Tools were installed automatically.

Using zip with max -9 compression a 20GB CentOS 5.5 virtual machine and
all associated files fits in a 3.7GB zipfile . That zipfile itself will
fit, along with unzip.exe and the 104.1MB VMware Player 3.1.3 installer
(or the 570.1MB VMware Workstation 7.1.3 installer), on a single layer
DVD-R disc for distribution.

--Doc



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