In this post, we’ll explore extending an ext4 partition, both with and without LVM, using “growpart“.
Initially, we’ll focus on extending the LVM root partition (/), followed by extending a non-LVM partition using ‘growpart‘.
Extend LVM root partition(/) using growpart:
1) From the VM, navigate to ‘Edit settings’ and adjust the hard disk size according to your needs. In my case, I increased it from 120GB to 140GB.
2) Now, execute the following command to rescan the block device, updating the kernel with the latest disk size information:echo '1' > /sys/class/scsi_disk/32\:0\:0\:0/device/rescan –> (where “32\:0\:0\:0” is the SCSI disk ID for my disk, which might differ for yours; verify the correct value inside the directory).
3) When you use the command ‘fdisk -l‘ observe that the ‘/dev/sda5‘ LVM partition is created within an ‘Extended‘ partition. Consequently, we need to extend the ‘Extended‘ partition (/dev/sda2) first, and then proceed to extend the actual LVM partition (/dev/sda5).
root@madhu-testvm:~# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 150.3 GB, 150323855360 bytes
/dev/sda1 * 2048 499711 248832 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 499712 251658239 125579264 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 501760 251658239 125578240 8e Linux LVM
4) First extending the “Extended” partition as shown in the below command
growpart /dev/sda 2
5) Now after extending the “Extended” partition, we can go ahead and extend the actual LVM partition with the following command,
growpart /dev/sda 5
6) partprobe /dev/sda # To request the kernel to re-read the partition table.
7) pvresize /dev/sda5 # To resize the physical volume to the maximum size available. (the new size can be verified using “pvs” or can also be verified using “vgs” command)
8) lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/madhu-vg/root # to extend the LVM to maximum size available.
9) resize2fs /dev/madhu-vg/root # This is to enlarge the file system (Ex: ext4 in my case) on the LVM.
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Expanding normal (Non-LVM) partition using growpart:
1) From the VM, navigate to “Edit settings” and increase the size of the hard disk as per the requirement. In my case, it was 130GB, so I have increased it to 150GB.
2) Now, execute the following command to rescan the block device, so that the kernel has the latest disk size information.echo '1' > /sys/class/scsi_disk/32\:0\:1\:0/device/rescan –> (where “32\:0\:0\:0” is the SCSI disk ID).
3) Identify the partition we need to expand (using fdisk or lsblk), in my case, it’s ‘/dev/sdb1‘.
root@madhu-server~# fdisk -l | grep sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 161.1 GB, 161061273600 bytes
/dev/sdb1 2048 314568764 157283358+ 83 Linux
4) Now extend the partition (/dev/sdb1) with growpart.
5) partprobe /dev/sdb # To request the kernel to re-read the partition table.
6) Now the final step is to extend the file system on the partition.
resize2fs /dev/sdb1
