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Old 10-31-2009, 03:29 AM   #1
xav.vijay
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Extend Hard Disk size


Hi

I am not even sure even if this is possible, but thought better ask it out. This is what I need...

I have Slackware installed on a 8 GB HDD. The / partition is getting full and probably in a week, it will run out of disk space. I have an additional 30 HD, which I have added to this computer. This is not formatted yet, so I am open to do whatever on it.

How do I extend my / partition to the 2nd hard drive, and/or to a 3rd hard drive in the future? Is this what LVM's for? If yes, how to do it, any link to tutorials would be greatly helpful.

/ is in ext4 filesystem. I did some googling, but I couldn't find anything ex4 resizing.

Thank You

Antonio..
 
Old 10-31-2009, 04:31 AM   #2
syg00
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Yep - that's LVM in a nutshell. See here - it's a little old, but reasonable.
I don't believe you can convert a current filesystem to LVM - you'll need to create the environment then copy it in. After that you can extend by adding PVs (basically partitions or whole disk volumes), and dynamically extending the logical volume and then the filesystem (if it supports it).
I would expect ext4 to be o.k. with extending presuming the correct level of e2fsprogs, but in your case you can't go past the end of the disk without LVM, or copying the system to the bigger disk.
 
Old 11-01-2009, 02:47 AM   #3
salasi
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xav.vijay View Post
Hi

I am not even sure even if this is possible...
...all things are possible (except where forbidden by laws of physics), its just that some things are more difficult than others...

Quote:
This is what I need...

I have Slackware installed on a 8 GB HDD. The / partition is getting full and probably in a week, it will run out of disk space. I have an additional 30 HD, which I have added to this computer. This is not formatted yet, so I am open to do whatever on it.

How do I extend my / partition to the 2nd hard drive, and/or to a 3rd hard drive in the future? Is this what LVM's for?
/ is in ext4 filesystem
In no particular order:
  • yes, its what LVMs are for, but to get to an LVM, you'll probably find that you wanted to start from somewhere other than here
  • the filesystem that you are currently using for / is essentially irrelevant to this issue; you could format your new disk with a different partition type or types (although ext4 isn't a bad choice; I just wanted to make it clear that you still had the freedom, if its of any use)
  • the easy way (not the best way in the long term, necessarily... that might still be lvm for you) is to chose a partition or some partitions to move to your new disk; if for example, /home is getting over-full, you could move that; in practice you might decide that its /home, swap and something else that needs to go, but you should look at actual sizes before making that decision
  • make a backup!
  • check the backup
  • make partitions on the new disk
  • (easiest is to do the next few operations from a live cd)
  • copy data across
  • check that you can alter /etc/fstab to mount the new disk partitions in the right place(s)
  • delete old data
  • eject the live cd and re-boot the installed system
and, by the way, I am assuming that you 30 HD is a 30G HD and is probably faster than your older (?) 8G HD.
 
Old 11-05-2009, 11:01 PM   #4
xav.vijay
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Thank you for your suggestions...

I followed this link.
http://www.linuxconfig.org/Linux_lvm...Volume_Manager

this tutorial is quite excellent, with screenshots, something what I was looking for...

the machine is a VM, so 8 or 30 ...speed is almost the same!!

Thanks

Antonio..
 
  


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