Expanding Existing Partitioned Storage: Can I and How?

jcope · 04-14-2014, 05:00 PM

Question
Can I somehow merge or make available the storage space of /sda2 to /sda1 so as to effectively expand sda1 rather than have a large /dir mounted to it? If not, how can I mount it such that I don't lose everything in my /home/ dir (where most space is needed)?

Secondly: what, in general is considered best practice for mounting a partition for general storage purposes?

Details:
I'm relatively new to linux, but not uncomfortable using the command line. On my work computer, I began getting "Low Disk Space" pop ups, which is odd because I have a fair bit of storage and virtually nothing that should take up that much space.

What I gathered was that the boot partition (/dev/sda1) is the only partition being used for storage (if I'm reading this right). See the 2nd partion below.

Code:

[jcope@jcope ~]$ df -H
Filesystem             Size   Used  Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/HelpDeskRHEL6-Root
                        16G   7.8G   7.0G  54% /
tmpfs                  4.0G   300k   4.0G   1% /dev/shm
/dev/mapper/HelpDeskRHEL6-NotBackedUp
                       8.5G   154M   7.9G   2% /NotBackedUp
/dev/mapper/HelpDeskRHEL6-VirtualMachines
                        31G   8.8G    21G  30% /VirtualMachines
/dev/sda1              3.2G   120M   2.9G   4% /boot
/dev/mapper/HelpDeskRHEL6-Home
                       4.3G   4.0G   103M  98% /home

Here is /dev/sda2. From what I can tell, none of it's storage is being utilized because it's not mounted and doesn't have a file system.

Code:

[root@jcope jcope]# fdisk /dev/sda2 -l

Disk /dev/sda2: 316.9 GB, 316850307072 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38521 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe8070000

syg00 · 04-14-2014, 06:25 PM

As it's a work machine, talk to your helpdesk.
With RHEL you probably don't have the authority to change what needs to be changed. And if it's a SOE rollout, any changes you make will get regressed on the next update.

/dev/sda1 is not your problem - as you suspect /home likely is, and that is a lv in LVM. LVM is a disk virtualization layer on top of the physical disk partitions - the /dev/mapper entries above are your LVM lvs. Redhat have a LVM Administration manual that is very good - moving unallocated space to more convenient spots is one of the things LVM is good at.