Extents are contiguous blocks on the hard disk that are used to keep files close together and prevent fragmentation. Fragments occur when parts of a file are scattered across a hard disk and do not exist in contiguous blocks.
How to Extend LVM When there is no Free Space in Volume Group
- Step:1 Create Physical Volume on new disk.
- Step:2 Now extend the Size of Volume Group using vgextend.
- Step:3 Verify the size of Volume Group.
- Step:4 Extend lvm partition size with lvextend command.
- Step:5 Run resize2fs command.
- Step:6 Verify the file system size.
LVM is a tool for logical volume management which includes allocating disks, striping, mirroring and resizing logical volumes. With LVM, a hard drive or set of hard drives is allocated to one or more physical volumes. LVM physical volumes can be placed on other block devices which might span two or more disks.
I am assuming that a new disk is assigned to Linux box and i am going to perform below steps on CentOS 7.
- Step:1 Create a partition using fdisk.
- Step:2 Create LVM components : pvcreate, vgcreate and lvcreate.
- Step:3 Create XFS file system on lvm parition “/dev/vg_xfs/xfs_db”
- Step:4 Mount the xfs file system.
How Linux Logical Volume Manager (lvm) works
- Software Requirements and Conventions Used.
- Create Partitions.
- Create physical volumes.
- Create Virtual Group.
- Create Logical Volumes.
- Create Filesystem on logical volumes.
- Edit /etc/fstab. 7.1. Mount logical volumes.
- Extending a logical volume.
In my opinion the LVM partition is more usefull cause then after installation you can later change partition sizes and number of partitions easily. In standard partition also you can do resizing, but total number of physical partitions are limited to 4. With LVM you have much greater flexibility.
Logical Volume Management
When an encrypted LVM partition is used, the encryption key is stored in memory (RAM). If this partition isn't encrypted, the thief may access the key and use it to decrypt the data from the encrypted partitions. This is why, when you use LVM encrypted partitions, it is recommended to also encrypt the swap partition.
A mount point is simply a directory, like any other, that is created as part of the root filesystem. So, for example, the home filesystem is mounted on the directory /home. Filesystems can be mounted at mount points on other non-root filesystems but this is less common.
LVM (Logical Volume Management) is a flexible and advanced option available to manage hard disks in most of the major Linux distributions. Physical Volume (PV): Consists of Raw disks or RAID arrays or other storage devices. Volume Group (VG): Combines the physical volumes into storage groups.
Highlight the volume to be resized and right click for options, choose reduce volume. You can relabel the LVM at the same time you enter the new size. Follow the prompts to OK the change and voila, you will have unallocated free space. You can make as many new LVMs as you need with the available space.
2 Answers
- Start a Terminal session by typing Ctrl + Alt + T.
- Type gksudo gparted and hit Enter.
- Type your password in the window that pops up.
- Find the partition Ubuntu is installed in.
- Right-click the partition and select Resize/Move.
- Expand the Ubuntu partition into the unallocated space.
- Profit!
In general, using LVM, a partition can span more than one disk. The size of logical volumes can also be extended and reduced without any loss of data on that volume. First using fdisk command make a partition and toggle that partition to LINUX LVM (8e) label. Then create a physical volume using pvcreate command.
To resize a partition using fdisk :
- Unmount the device:
- Run fdisk disk_name .
- Use the p option to determine the line number of the partition to be deleted.
- Use the d option to delete a partition.
- Use the n option to create a partition and follow the prompts.
- Set the partition type to LVM:
Resizing a root partition is tricky. In Linux, there isn't a way to actually resize an existing partition. One should delete the partition and re-create a new partition again with the required size in the same position.
5 easy steps to resize root LVM partition in RHEL/CentOS 7/8
- Lab Environment.
- Step 1: Backup your data (Optional but recommended)
- Step 2: Boot into rescue mode.
- Step 3: Activate Logical Volume.
- Step 4: Perform File system Check.
- Step 5: Resize root LVM partition. Reduce or Shrink root LVM partition size in Linux.
- Verify the new size of root partition.
Select the /var partition and click Expand Partitions. At the appliance's terminal prompt, log in as root. Edit /etc/fstab, remove the line: /dev/sdc1 /var ext3 rw 0 0 and save the change. Shut down the appliance.
How to extend a Linux PV partition online after virtual disk
- extend the partition: delete and create a larger one with fdisk.
- extend the PV size with pvresize.
- use free extents for lvresize operations.
- and then resize2fs for file system.
1 Answer
- Resize the physical volume with the command: pvresize /dev/sda2.
- Resize the logical volume and filesystem in one go with the command: lvresize -L +50G /dev/YOUR_VOLUME_GROUP_NAME/vg_centos6.