Simon Fredsted

Extending a logical volume group usually needs to be done when the size of a VMware disk has been increased for a Linux VM. When resizing a disk, the volume isn't extended automatically, so you need to extend the logical volume in the VM's volume group.

This article assumes that:

• You have a LVM volume group with a logical volume
• You've added free space in the virtualizer, e.g. VMware
• You're running Ubuntu. Might also work with other distributions
• You have basic knowledge of partitions and Linux

1. Start by creating a new partition from the free space. I prefer doing this with a GUI using gparted. You need XQuartz if you're on a Mac.
   1. SSH into the box with -X, e.g. ssh -X myserver
   2. Install gparted: apt-get install -y gparted and run gparted
   3. Find the unallocated space ("unallocated" file system)
   4. Right click and click New.
   5. Create as "primary partition" and Choose lvm2 pv  as the "file system"
   6. Click Add
   7. Click Apply in the toolbar and again in the dialog
   8. Note the disk name in the Partition column, e.g. /dev/sda3
2. You should see the disk with fdisk -l
3. Run pvcreate <disk>, e.g. pvcreate /dev/sda3
4. Find the volume group: run vgdisplay (name is where it says VG Name)
5. Extend the VG with the disk: vgextend <vg name> <disk>, e.g. vgextend VolumeGroup /dev/sda3
6. Run vgscan & pvscan
7. Run lvdisplay to find the LV Path, e.g. /dev/VolumeGroup/root
8. Extend the logical volume: lvextend <lv path> <disk>, e.g. lvextend /dev/VolumeGroup/root /dev/sda3
9. Resize the file system: resize2fs <lv path>, e.g. resize2fs /dev/VolumeGroup/root
10. Finally, verify that the size of the partition has been increased with df -h

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 27th, 2016 at 18:01 and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.