Solved: How to extend or grow a linux filesystem under LVM

In this post we will see how to grow a Linux filesystem without reboot.

• Let's check our current filesystem. We want to extend this filesystem by 200MB.

[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]# df -h /CVFS1
Filesystem                  Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/cvsvg-cldvdsvol1 47M 12M    32M  26%   /CVFS1
[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]#

• First check if we have free space in VG

[root@cloudvedas /]# vgs
 VG    #PV    #LV    #SN    Attr    VSize    VFree
 cvsvg  1      1      0      wz--n- 196.00m  144.00m
 rhel   1      3      0      wz--n- 7.51g    36.00m
[root@cloudvedas /]#

• Since we don't have 200MB free in "cvsvg" so we will add a new disk to it. First label the disk for LVM and get it under LVM control using pvcreate.

[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]# pvcreate /dev/sdb2
 Physical volume "/dev/sdb2" successfully created
[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]#

• Add the new partition to our VG.

[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]# vgextend cvsvg /dev/sdb2
 Volume group "cvsvg" successfully extended
[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]#

• Check the VG size again.

[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]# vgs
 VG    #PV   #LV    #SN    Attr    VSize    VFree
 cvsvg  2     1      0     wz--n-  444.00m  392.00m
 rhel   1     3      0     wz--n-  7.51g    36.00m
[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]#

• Now we have the required space so, let's extend the volume first.

[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]# lvextend -L +200M /dev/cvsvg/cldvdsvol1
 Size of logical volume cvsvg/cldvdsvol1 changed from 52.00 MiB (13 extents) to 252.00 MiB (63 extents).
 Logical volume cldvdsvol1 successfully resized

• On checking the LV we can see it's now extended as is now of 252MB.

[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]# lvs
 LV VG Attr LSize Pool Origin Data% Meta% Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
 cldvdsvol1 cvsvg -wi-ao---- 252.00m
 root rhel -wi-ao---- 6.67g
 swap rhel -wi-ao---- 820.00m
 testvol1 rhel -wi-a----- 4.00m
[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]#

• Let's increase the filesystem now using resize2fs.

[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]# resize2fs /dev/cvsvg/cldvdsvol1
resize2fs 1.42.9 (28-Dec-2013)
Filesystem at /dev/cvsvg/cldvdsvol1 is mounted on /CVFS1; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 2
The filesystem on /dev/cvsvg/cldvdsvol1 is now 258048 blocks long.

• Check the file system now.

[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]# df -h /CVFS1
Filesystem                   Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/cvsvg-cldvdsvol1 241M  13M  217M  6%   /CVFS1
[root@cloudvedas CVFS1]#

Great so we have now extended the filesystem.