File system resizing

Process for resizing a file system on a dedicated server.

Ext2/Ext3 & LVM

Use the tool resize2fs that is part of the e2fsprogs package on a modern distribution.

Shrinking a file system is the more dangerous operation. Tips and tricks for shrinking:

• Take a backup before you start!

• You will need to unmount the file system and perform a forced fsck (e2fsck -f)

• The utility will handily print out the new size of of the file system afterwards.

  [root@BLAH ~]# resize2fs /dev/BLAH/data 45G
  resize2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
  Resizing the filesystem on /dev/BLAH/data to 11796480 (4k) blocks.
  The filesystem on /dev/BLAH/data is now 11796480 blocks long.

• Calculate the new size in kilobytes by multiplying the block count (11796480 in the above example) by the number of kilobytes (4 in the above example output). This filesystem has a size of 47185920 KiB now.

• Resizing a logical volume is then easy:

  lvreduce -L 47185920k /dev/BLAH/data

• Check the file system (in read only mode) again before proceeding:

  e2fsck -fn /dev/BLAH/data