PancakeHut https://pancakehut.net The cake is a lie! Mon, 01 Jan 2024 22:01:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://pancakehut.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/cropped-tabeneko___pancake_by_meoon-d7a4zen-32x32.jpg PancakeHut https://pancakehut.net 32 32 Working with QCOW2 disk images https://pancakehut.net/2024/01/working-with-qcow2-disk-images/ Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:50:25 +0000 https://pancakehut.net/?p=927 For separation purposes and also gaming I use virtual machines. During the years I have some difficulties with opening and editing the disk images of my virtual machines. So I would like to share my experiences…

Let’s start with a relatively easy one:

Expanding a QCOW2 container

$ qemu-img resize disk.qcow2 +10G

This will add 10 GB of free space to your virtual disk.

Shrinking a QCOW2 container

This is not so straightforward because you have to do a few steps before you starting to reduce the size of the disk image. You have to do two things before:

  1. Reduce the size of the partition inside virtual machine
  2. Write zeros to the unpartitioned space

You can do both with MiniTool Partition Wizard on Windows. On a Linux virtual machine, well, it’s bit more difficult:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=zerofile bs=1M
$ rm zerofile

After shutting down the VM you should do the following on the host:

$ qemu-img convert -f raw -O qcow2 guest.img guest-copy.qcow2

Attention! It will make a reduce-sized copy of your disks so you should have plenty of free space for this step. After the completion of the process you should remove the original file (of course after checking everything is right with the new one).

Attach a QCOW2 container to your filesystem as a block device

$ modprobe nbd max_part=8
$ qemu-nbd --connect=/dev/nbd1 /media/yourfolder/disk.qcow2
$ mkdir /media/diskname
$ mount /dev/nbd1p1 /media/diskname

Basically you are setting the maximum number of partition with first line and with the second you are attaching your disk image and finally you are mounting it to your filesystem.

Detach a QCOW2 container

$ umount /media/diskname
$ rmdir /media/diskname
$ qemu-nbd --disconnect /dev/nbd1
$ rmmod nbd

This article is for more advance users because it assumes that you have a basic understanding how to work with QCOW2 containers and virtual machines. These methods are not so straightforward so I wrote them down.

Sources in order to create this guide and to solve my previous problems related to this article:

If you are new in this topic and you would like to get a basic understanding about this subject:

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The return https://pancakehut.net/2023/12/the-return/ Fri, 22 Dec 2023 14:42:07 +0000 https://pancakehut2.riczroninfactories.eu/?p=784 After 3 years of forced hiatus due to some serious technical issue with blog’s SQL tables and some other human issues the blog is now fully returned. I still have some work with pages and posts because so much changed in WordPress’ engine and plugins. Also the previous theme is refused to work on this newer version of WordPress so we decided with Hughes that I should use a more recent theme for the blog (the last update of the previous one was back in 2012).

Plans for the future

  • Continue the Picture of the day and Worth to check out series
  • Review some of the games that I possess in my Steam library
  • Share some of my bash scripts and other stuff that I find useful
  • Write reviews about animes, mangas and light novels (maybe visual novels)
  • Share some of our gameplay videos
  • Etc.

Let’s hope this time there won’t be any issues like a webpage migration and a wordpress export tool that forgot to save the user table. Also the pancakehut.net address will associate again with site again… hopefully soon enough.

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Hyperdimension Neptunia series in a nutshell… https://pancakehut.net/2019/12/26-hyperdimension-neptunia-series-in-a-nutshell/ https://pancakehut.net/2019/12/26-hyperdimension-neptunia-series-in-a-nutshell/#respond Thu, 26 Dec 2019 21:56:02 +0000 https://pancakehut.net/?p=650 A small clip from the 3rd game that summarize the gist of every Neptunia game.

I’m still very busy with my final exams so don’t expect any update soon. I play Neptunia games in order to relieve stress and they are quite efficient in that regard.

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Picture of the day – 2019-06-25 https://pancakehut.net/2019/06/picture-of-the-day-2019-06-25/ https://pancakehut.net/2019/06/picture-of-the-day-2019-06-25/#respond Tue, 25 Jun 2019 06:00:40 +0000 https://pancakehut.net/?p=633 Let’s start with this picture. The artist is called kukka and I found her work recently.

Kemonomimi + Beautiful scenery = Awesomeness

Source: Yande.re | Artist: kukkakukka09 [pixiv] | Webpage: kukkakukka09.wixsite.com

And also I use this one from her as a background at the moment.

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Worth to check out – 2019-06-24 https://pancakehut.net/2019/06/24-worth-to-check-out/ https://pancakehut.net/2019/06/24-worth-to-check-out/#respond Mon, 24 Jun 2019 06:00:04 +0000 https://pancakehut.net/?p=623 As I promised the big revival of this section.

[Alstroemeria Records] conversion

Vocal: Ayame | Album: CLOCK LOCK THINK | Transcription: Petalite Yuu | Original track

You should also check out the refix version of this track here.

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Goals and changes https://pancakehut.net/2019/06/23-goals-and-changes/ https://pancakehut.net/2019/06/23-goals-and-changes/#respond Sun, 23 Jun 2019 11:42:54 +0000 https://pancakehut.net/?p=616 Hi there!

After little more than a month (and after some hard exams) I’ve decided the future goals of this blog. Basically I will bring back the Picture of the day posts and the music recommendation section. The blog will further go into this direction and I will start to recommend VN for example. I will abandoned the more tech-savvy stuff and only write about when it’s related to entertainment (like how to setup a virtual machine in order to play games or something like this).

Another noteworthy announcement Seya.Raysen retired as an editor so the blog basically is a one-man army now.

That’s all for now! SQUADALA, I’M OFF!

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Sorting out https://pancakehut.net/2019/05/21-sorting-out/ https://pancakehut.net/2019/05/21-sorting-out/#comments Tue, 21 May 2019 19:04:41 +0000 http://pancakehut.net/?p=589 I’m still sorting out what should I do with this blog. I don’t have too much time to write what I want to. But I also opened the registration and so if you have any suggestion then you are able to tell now.

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Exams, exams, exams… https://pancakehut.net/2019/01/09-exams-exams-exams/ https://pancakehut.net/2019/01/09-exams-exams-exams/#respond Wed, 09 Jan 2019 01:16:34 +0000 http://pancakehut.net/?p=576 I’m still here but I’m extremely busy with my exams. I will make the site GDPR-compatible later. Until then, here some music:

P.S.: I really hate university-level Maths…

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About GDPR… https://pancakehut.net/2018/07/about-gdpr/ https://pancakehut.net/2018/07/about-gdpr/#respond Wed, 11 Jul 2018 21:42:21 +0000 http://pancakehut.net/?p=550 Due to GDPR and my lack of time to make the site compatible I temporally disabled registration. Also I made something similar to a privacy policy under the “About us” page. Feel free to read it…

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Firefox – The returnal https://pancakehut.net/2018/05/firefox-the-returnal/ https://pancakehut.net/2018/05/firefox-the-returnal/#respond Fri, 04 May 2018 11:45:24 +0000 http://pancakehut.net/?p=537 It has been about nine months since I switched to Chromium. I didn’t and don’t have a single problem with it but yesterday I decided to go back to Firefox.

Yep, a Firefox don’t really like other foxes to come and compete with him…

The first thought crossed my mind was like… “WELCOME TO MOZILLA CHROMIUM“. Firefox lost all of its uniqueness and became another Chrome-like browser. After using Chromium for months I don’t really care but it’s sad. We never asked for this change.

However things are improved:

  • first and foremost there are capable plugins for what I consider important (for example I’m huge fan of Panorama or Tab Groups)
  • also “cross-platform” plugins are cool
  • it’s GNU/Linux support is better now
  • broken things are not so broken (like you can opt out survey/studies now)
  • the general responsiveness of GUI is better (it feels like it’s better than Chromium)

I’m still testing the browser but the only annoyance I came across is diagonal tearing during fast scrolling. I regulary see this issue on Linux but this time it’s only Firefox. Dunno why but that’s how it is.

My overall feelings about this change is positive but let’s see how it will turn out in the future.

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