Reclaim Space in a VM on Thin or Thick VMDKs

Fedora/CentOs/RedHat
[root@rac1 ~]$ yum install zerofree
updates/metalink | 12 kB 00:00
updates | 4.5 kB 00:00
updates/primary_db | 4.3 MB 00:21
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
Running transaction check
Package zerofree.i686 0:1.0.1-8.fc15 will be installed
Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
================================================================================
Installing:
zerofree i686 1.0.1-8.fc15 fedora 20 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install 1 Package

Total download size: 20 k
Installed size: 20 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
zerofree-1.0.1-8.fc15.i686.rpm | 20 kB 00:00
Running Transaction Check
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing : zerofree-1.0.1-8.fc15.i686 1/1

Installed:
zerofree.i686 0:1.0.1-8.fc15

Complete!
For Debian/Ubuntu:
[root@rac1 ~]$ apt-get install zerofree
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
zerofree
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 17 not upgraded.
Need to get 7,272 B of archives.
After this operation, 61.4 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ubuntu.cs.utah.edu/ubuntu/ oneiric/universe zerofree amd64 1.0.1-2ubuntu1 [7,272 B]
Fetched 7,272 B in 0s (41.5 kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package zerofree.
(Reading database ... 22748 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking zerofree (from .../zerofree_1.0.1-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up zerofree (1.0.1-2ubuntu1) ...

Then you need to mount the partition as read-only and run zerofree on it. If you need perform this on your OS/root partition, then power off your VM and attach the OS disk to another Linux VM. Here is how it looks like:

[root@rac1 ~]$ mount -o remount,ro /dev/mapper/test-lvol0
[root@rac1 ~]$ zerofree -v /dev/mapper/test-lvol0
1106/485301/512000

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