[CentOS-devel] Disk size on Vagrant image

On 27/08/17 04:45, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 26, 2017 at 2:18 AM, Laurentiu Pancescu
> <lpancescu at centosproject.org> wrote:
> Stop *right here*. OK, I went through pretty much this fun and games
> around 2001 working for Honking Big Proxy Service(tm). You're really
> going to hurt yourself trying to pre-optimize your disk images and
> shove them into a pre-allocated filesystem. Come listen to a story
> from an old timer.
> 
> You will hurt yourself doing this. Work from a tarball, *not-not-not*
> a disk image, built on a chroot cage. Apply modifications as needed.

Expanding a tarball on an empty image sounds much better than 
filesystem-dependent tricks to eliminate allocated, but unused, blocks. 
I saw a few months ago that Scaleway uses Docker to generate CentOS 
images for their physical servers (which boot without Docker) and are 
debuggable as Docker images as well, but they seem quite broken when I 
look at the open issues: problems with yum update, SELinux is disabled 
and enabling it doesn't work, mounting the wrong root filesystem, LVM 
not mounting volumes on boot...  so I thought I'd rather not go that 
route.  Perhaps simply copying the files from another image, generated 
by Anaconda, and running grub inside the copy would work, though.

https://github.com/scaleway/image-centos

>> I started to go through the XFS documentation, to see if it's possible to
>> implement something similar to zerofree.  I'm quite tired during the week
>> after work and commuting (there are constant traffic jams around Stuttgart -
>> think 35km one-way in 60-90 minutes), so progress is really slow.
> 
> Brother, you've my sympathies. I set up for a while working in London
> spending weekends with my family, and staying at a cheap flatshare in
> Elephant and Castle. I was very productive, though it was rough on me
> and my family. I wound up buying every Robin Hobb book I could find
> for the 2 hour train commutes, and spent a fascinating month in
> Portsmouth one night due to dangerous hypoglycemia and a  missed
> transfer. It got much better after 4:00 AM when I found the only
> all-night diner available and met very nice night people to chat up.
> Being the only native English speaker on a London bus at 2:00 AM was a
> frequent and fascinating experience.

Ouch - and I thought I had it tough, commuting in my car in the sun at 
35C outside (I love manual transmission, which is pretty much the norm 
here, but constantly pressing and releasing the clutch during traffic 
jams for around an hour every day is no fun for my knee, and I'm not 
getting any younger).  I should probably move closer to work, as soon as 
possible.

Best regards,
Laurențiu