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Chapter 6. Modifying the size of a logical volume

After you have created a logical volume, you can modify the size of the volume.

6.1. Growing a logical volume and file system

This procedure describes how to extend the logical volume and grow a file system on the same logical volume.

To increase the size of a logical volume, use the lvextend command. When you extend the logical volume, you can indicate how much you want to extend the volume, or how large you want it to be after you extend it.

Prerequisites

  1. You have an existing logical volume (LV) with a file system on it. Determine the file system type by using the df -Th command.

    For more information on creating LV and a file system, see Creating LVM logical volume.

  2. You have sufficient space in the volume group to grow your LV and file system. Use the vgs -o name,vgfree command to determine the available space.

Procedure

  1. Optional: If the volume group has insufficient space to grow your LV, then add a new physical volume to the volume group by using the following command: 

    # vgextend myvg /dev/vdb3
Physical volume "/dev/vdb3" successfully created.
Volume group "myvg" successfully extended

    For more information, see Creating LVM volume group.

  2. Now that the volume group is large enough, execute any one of the following steps as per your requirement:

    1. To extend the LV with the provided size, use the following command: 

      # lvextend -L 3G /dev/myvg/mylv
Size of logical volume myvg/mylv changed from 2.00 GiB (512 extents) to 3.00 GiB (768 extents).
Logical volume myvg/mylv successfully resized.
      Note

      You can use the -r option of the lvextend command to extend the logical volume and resize the underlying file system with a single command: 

      # lvextend -r -L 3G /dev/myvg/mylv
      Warning

      You can also extend the logical volume using the lvresize command with the same arguments, but this command does not guarantee against accidental shrinkage.

    2. To extend the mylv logical volume to fill all of the unallocated space in the myvg volume group, use the following command: 

      # lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/myvg/mylv
 Size of logical volume myvg/mylv changed from 10.00 GiB (2560 extents) to 6.35 TiB (1665465 extents).
 Logical volume myvg/mylv successfully resized.

      As with the lvcreate command, you can use the -l argument of the lvextend command to specify the number of extents by which to increase the size of the logical volume. You can also use this argument to specify a percentage of the volume group, or a percentage of the remaining free space in the volume group.

  3. If you are not using the r option with the lvextend command to extend the LV and resize the file system with a single command, then resize the file system on the logical volume by using the following command: 

    xfs_growfs /mnt/mnt1/
meta-data=/dev/mapper/myvg-mylv  isize=512    agcount=4, agsize=65536 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
         =                       crc=1        finobt=1, sparse=1, rmapbt=0
         =                       reflink=1
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=262144, imaxpct=25
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0, ftype=1
log      =internal log           bsize=4096   blocks=2560, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
data blocks changed from 262144 to 524288
    Note

    Without the -D option, xfs_growfs grows the file system to the maximum size supported by the underlying device. For more information, see Increasing the size of an XFS file system.

    For resizing an ext4 file system, see Resizing an ext4 file system.

Verification

  • Verify if the file system is growing by using the following command: 

    # df -Th
Filesystem            Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs              devtmpfs  1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs                 tmpfs     1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                 tmpfs     1.9G  8.6M  1.9G   1% /run
tmpfs                 tmpfs     1.9G     0  1.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/rhel-root xfs        45G  3.7G   42G   9% /
/dev/vda1             xfs      1014M  369M  646M  37% /boot
tmpfs                 tmpfs     374M     0  374M   0% /run/user/0
/dev/mapper/myvg-mylv xfs       2.0G   47M  2.0G   3% /mnt/mnt1

Additional resources

  • vgextend(8), lvextend(8), and xfs_growfs(8) man pages

6.2. Shrinking logical volumes

You can reduce the size of a logical volume with the lvreduce command.

Note

Shrinking is not supported on a GFS2 or XFS file system, so you cannot reduce the size of a logical volume that contains a GFS2 or XFS file system.

If the logical volume you are reducing contains a file system, to prevent data loss you must ensure that the file system is not using the space in the logical volume that is being reduced. For this reason, it is recommended that you use the --resizefs option of the lvreduce command when the logical volume contains a file system.

When you use this option, the lvreduce command attempts to reduce the file system before shrinking the logical volume. If shrinking the file system fails, as can occur if the file system is full or the file system does not support shrinking, then the lvreduce command will fail and not attempt to shrink the logical volume.

Warning

In most cases, the lvreduce command warns about possible data loss and asks for a confirmation. However, you should not rely on these confirmation prompts to prevent data loss because in some cases you will not see these prompts, such as when the logical volume is inactive or the --resizefs option is not used.

Note that using the --test option of the lvreduce command does not indicate where the operation is safe, as this option does not check the file system or test the file system resize.

Procedure

  • To shrink the mylv logical volume in myvg volume group to 64 megabytes, use the following command: 

    # lvreduce --resizefs -L 64M myvg/mylv
fsck from util-linux 2.37.2
/dev/mapper/myvg-mylv: clean, 11/25688 files, 4800/102400 blocks
resize2fs 1.46.2 (28-Feb-2021)
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/mapper/myvg-mylv to 65536 (1k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/mapper/myvg-mylv is now 65536 (1k) blocks long.

Size of logical volume myvg/mylv changed from 100.00 MiB (25 extents) to 64.00 MiB (16 extents).
 Logical volume myvg/mylv successfully resized.

    In this example, mylv contains a file system, which this command resizes together with the logical volume.

  • Specifying the - sign before the resize value indicates that the value will be subtracted from the logical volume’s actual size. To shrink a logical volume to an absolute size of 64 megabytes, use the following command: 

    # lvreduce --resizefs -L -64M myvg/mylv

Additional resources

  • lvreduce(8) man page

6.3. Extending a striped logical volume

In order to increase the size of a striped logical volume, there must be enough free space on the underlying physical volumes that make up the volume group to support the stripe. For example, if you have a two-way stripe that that uses up an entire volume group, adding a single physical volume to the volume group will not enable you to extend the stripe. Instead, you must add at least two physical volumes to the volume group.

For example, consider a volume group vg that consists of two underlying physical volumes, as displayed with the following vgs command. 

# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree
  vg     2   0   0 wz--n- 271.31G 271.31G

You can create a stripe using the entire amount of space in the volume group. 

# lvcreate -n stripe1 -L 271.31G -i 2 vg
  Using default stripesize 64.00 KB
  Rounding up size to full physical extent 271.31 GB
  Logical volume "stripe1" created
# lvs -a -o +devices
  LV      VG   Attr   LSize   Origin Snap%  Move Log Copy%  Devices
  stripe1 vg   -wi-a- 271.31G                               /dev/sda1(0),/dev/sdb1(0)

Note that the volume group now has no more free space. 

# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree
  vg     2   1   0 wz--n- 271.31G    0

The following command adds another physical volume to the volume group, which then has 135 gigabytes of additional space. 

# vgextend vg /dev/sdc1
  Volume group "vg" successfully extended
# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree
  vg     3   1   0 wz--n- 406.97G 135.66G

At this point you cannot extend the striped logical volume to the full size of the volume group, because two underlying devices are needed in order to stripe the data. 

# lvextend vg/stripe1 -L 406G
  Using stripesize of last segment 64.00 KB
  Extending logical volume stripe1 to 406.00 GB
  Insufficient suitable allocatable extents for logical volume stripe1: 34480
more required

To extend the striped logical volume, add another physical volume and then extend the logical volume. In this example, having added two physical volumes to the volume group we can extend the logical volume to the full size of the volume group. 

# vgextend vg /dev/sdd1
  Volume group "vg" successfully extended
# vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree
  vg     4   1   0 wz--n- 542.62G 271.31G
# lvextend vg/stripe1 -L 542G
  Using stripesize of last segment 64.00 KB
  Extending logical volume stripe1 to 542.00 GB
  Logical volume stripe1 successfully resized

If you do not have enough underlying physical devices to extend the striped logical volume, it is possible to extend the volume anyway if it does not matter that the extension is not striped, which may result in uneven performance. When adding space to the logical volume, the default operation is to use the same striping parameters of the last segment of the existing logical volume, but you can override those parameters. The following example extends the existing striped logical volume to use the remaining free space after the initial lvextend command fails. 

# lvextend vg/stripe1 -L 406G
  Using stripesize of last segment 64.00 KB
  Extending logical volume stripe1 to 406.00 GB
  Insufficient suitable allocatable extents for logical volume stripe1: 34480
more required
# lvextend -i1 -l+100%FREE vg/stripe1