---
title: "Resize A QEMU Disk Image"
blurb: "Our hosting provider allows us to upload a custom image when
provisioning a new server. We will have to resize the image if it does not
match the size of the server's disk space."
...
## 1. Install `guestfs-tools`

    $ apt-get update
    $ apt-get install guestfs-tools

## 2. Download an image

Download an image from [https://cdimage.debian.org/images/cloud/](https://cdimage.debian.org/images/cloud/).

## 3. List partitions

Check the image disk partitions to see which partition needs resizing.

    $ virt-filesystems --long -h --all -a debian-12-nocloud-amd64.qcow2

## 4. Create output container

    $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 \
        -o preallocation=metadata debian-12-nocloud-amd64-resized.qcow2 20G

## 5. Generate resized image

    $ virt-resize --expand /dev/sda1 \
        debian-12-nocloud-amd64.qcow2 debian-12-nocloud-amd64-resized.qcow2

## Conclusion

You can now open `debian-12-nocloud-amd64-resized.qcow2` with a virtual machine
program and the disk size will be 20G.

## References

`virt-resize` manpage

    $ man virt-resize