How much disk space I really use?

User Support
1

Hi, I was thinking about installing next OS for gaming on same SSD, outside QubesOS, but I need more space.

On Dom0 pvs or vgs says

sudo pvs -o pv_name,pv_size,pv_free

I see I have Psize 236,87g and <21,33g free

sudo lvs -a -o lv_name,lv_size,data_percent
root 20g
vm-pool 191,38g
In between and after I have lot of „garbage” ie.

vm-debian-12-xfce-private 2g
vm-debian-12-xfce-private-1789242347-back 2g
vm-debian-12-xfce-private-1789812606-back 2g
vm-debian-12-xfce-root 20g
vm-debian-12-xfce-root-1789242347 20g
vm-debian-12-xfce-root-1789812606 20g

I assume „private” are private storage files, and „root” are system storage values seen in qubes menager>settings. But why are those dubels and tripels with numbers and „-back”?

On dom0

lsblk
loop0 715M
…
loop7 715M
sda 238,5G
sda1 600M
sda2 1G
sda3 236,9G
qubes_dom0-root—pool_tmeta 40M
qubes_dom0-root—pool-tpool 20G
qubes_dom0-root—pool-tdata 20G
qubes_dom0-swap 3,9g
qubes_dom0-vm—pool_tmeta 96M
qubes_dom0-vm—pool-tpool 191,4g

When I get on AppVM and run lsblk i get

xvda 20g (system)
xvdb 40g (private)
xvdc 10g (I dont know what it does, but I assume it has something to do with qubes_dom0-vm--Work--volatile)
xvdd 715M (again, but size suggests loop0-7)

When I add up numbers from lsblk run localy on AppVMs I exceed my disk capacity 256GB. System root cant take 20g even if it is displayed as such (even on sys-firewall or sys-net).

I try to size down private storage on unused AppVM but Qubes Manager dont let me to. I can only go up.

To wrap my question: How to manage those sizes best? Is there (can be) Partition Magic-like tool?

2

Those are “revisions” (old snapshots of the data) that you can revert to. Check out e.g. qvm-volume info debian-12-xfce:root

Don’t bother resizing the individual volumes, these are all maximum sizes. Thin volumes pretty much only take up the space that’s necessary to store the files that are actually inside of them.

If anything, you may need to resize the LVM storage as a whole and its partition. But I’d recommend not doing that, and using a separate drive instead for your gaming OS to avoid a whole lot of trouble, such as one OS clobbering data stored by the other (boot partitions etc.)