Bug#456623: debian-installer: Please offer the option of using an unpartitioned disk as an FS
Peter Skogström <peter.skogstrom@bitrunner.com> writes:
> Josh Triplett wrote:
> > When installing a virtual machine, I'd really like to use the entire
> > unpartitioned virtual disk as a filesystem, rather than partitioning
> > it. Doing so then makes the virtual disk contain a filesystem image
> > directly, which I can more easily mount from the host OS. However,
> > debian-installer does not let me create a filesystem directly on a
> > disk device; choosing a disk device only offers me the option of
> > partitioning it.
> It just as easy to mount virtual disks, image files with a tool called
> kpartx. Its packaged in debian, since lenny for itself and before that
> in multipath-tools It sets up loopdevices against the image so that
> every partition is easily mounted.
Yes, but using an unpartitioned disk with qemu (i.e. one for /boot, one
for /, etc.) should make it trivial to resize a partition. With
multiple partitions in one image it's harder.
Though I imagine you can do something similar with a single partition
per qemu drive and kpartx/fdisk, but it's probably not as easy as
running
dd if=drive.img ... seek=...
resize2fs ... drive.img
on the host.
--
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
GPG as of 2002-11-03 14DD 432F AE39 534D B592 F9A0 25C8 D377 8C7E 73A4
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