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---
title: Resize a guest disk image
description: Resize a a guest disk image using qemu-img and virt-resize
published: true
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date: 2021-11-01T23:40:55.146Z
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tags:
editor: markdown
dateCreated: 2021-08-12T10:55:58.877Z
---
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# qemu-img and virt-resize
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## Introduction
As per the software description : "*qemu-img allows you to create, convert and modify images offline. It can handle all image formats supported by QEMU.*"
Expanding a new disk implies creating a new blank image of the desired size and "copy" the existing disk into this new bigger image using virt-resize.
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> In-place expansion is not supported, which mean than a copy of the disk to be expanded has to be created
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{.is-info}
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## Installation
* On Fedora-related distributions, `virt-resize` is provided by the `guestfs-tools` package :
```
# dnf install guestfs-tools
```
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## Usage
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* **Create a new disk image**
In-place expansion is not supported. A new disk of the desired size has to be created.
Use the following command to create `phyllome_but_bigger.img` , a disk of 15 GiB
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```
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$ qemu-img create -f raw phyllome-bigger.img 15G
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```
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* **Expand the root partition**
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> This command only works if the root partition is located on vda3 and if the disk image filesystem uses EXT4.
{.is-warning}
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This command bellow requires root privileges.
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```
# virt-resize --expand /dev/vda3 phyllome.img phyllome_but_bigger.img
[ 0.0] Examining phyllome.img
**********
Summary of changes:
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/dev/vda1: This partition will be left alone.
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/dev/vda2: This partition will be left alone.
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/dev/vda3: This partition will be resized from 5G to 15G. The
filesystem ext4 on /dev/vda3 will be expanded using the ‘ ’
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method.
**********
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[ 2.1] Setting up initial partition table on phyllome-bigger.img
[ 12.9] Copying /dev/vda1
[ 13.1] Copying /dev/vda2
[ 13.4] Copying /dev/vda3
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100% ⟦▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒⟧ 00:00
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[ 38.3] Expanding /dev/vda3 using the ‘ ’
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Resize operation completed with no errors. Before deleting the old disk,
carefully check that the resized disk boots and works correctly.
```
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* **Inform your virtual machine to use the new disk**
*To-do*
