Expanding root partition

aagaag · 09-14-2014, 09:38 AM

My disk (a Hyper-V "*.vhdx" virtual disk) is partitioned as follows:

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 127 GiB, 136365211648 bytes, 266338304 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0005a8e2

Device     Boot   Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *       2048    499711    497664  243M 83 Linux
/dev/sda2        499712   8308735   7809024  3.7G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3       8308736 266338303 258029568  123G 83 Linux

I now realize that I need to expand /sda3 significantly. How can I do that non-destructively? Note that the physical HDD, onto which the Hyper-V disk is hosted, is a 4-terabyte drive; hence there is (in principle) plenty of space to expand.

yancek · 09-14-2014, 11:17 AM

You can't expand sda3 as your partitions are already taking up the entire virtual drive. You need to expand the drive itself. I don't use Hyper-V but the link below explains this on version 2.0. Might give you a start.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...v-2008-r2.aspx

If that doesn't help you should search online for increasing the size of the virtual drive.

aagaag · 09-14-2014, 12:11 PM

Thanks Yancek - much appreciated. I have now expanded the host V-disk to 3 Terabytes. See below. Now I am back to my original question: what can I do in order to expand sda3 without bricking my virtual machine? Which of the many archlinux partitioning tools should I use, and what should I exactly do? I seem to understand that there are crucial differences between MBR and GPT, and would not want to mess up things and end up having to reinstall from scratch...

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 3 TiB, 3221225472000 bytes, 6291456000 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0005a8e2

Device     Boot   Start       End   Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *       2048    499711    497664  243M 83 Linux
/dev/sda2        499712   8308735   7809024  3.7G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3       8308736 266338303 258029568  123G 83 Linux

yancek · 09-14-2014, 03:59 PM

The third option at the site below under "Expand the volume of a virtual hard disk connected to a virtual machine" seems to explain it. It also has the same explanation as the link I posted above to expand the virtual drive. You are usually better off getting answers to questions about microsoft software at their site or windows forums.

I'm not sure how it would work trying to use Linux tools inside the virtual machine not knowing which is your / partition in particular.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../dn282284.aspx

syg00 · 09-15-2014, 02:23 AM

I don't see why this is a M$oft issue - as far as the guest is concerned, it's a real disk. Run this as root/sudo and post the output

Code:

parted /dev/sda "print free"