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Chapter 5. Modifying the size of a logical volume
After you have created a logical volume, you can modify the size of the volume.
5.1. 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
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.
-
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
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.
Now that the volume group is large enough, execute any one of the following steps as per your requirement:
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.
NoteYou can use the
-r
option of thelvextend
command to extend the logical volume and resize the underlying file system with a single command:# lvextend -r -L 3G /dev/myvg/mylv
WarningYou can also extend the logical volume using the
lvresize
command with the same arguments, but this command does not guarantee against accidental shrinkage.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 thelvextend
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.
If you are not using the
r
option with thelvextend
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
NoteWithout 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)
, andxfs_growfs(8)
man pages
5.2. Shrinking logical volumes
You can reduce the size of a logical volume with the lvreduce
command.
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.
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