How to extend my root (/) partition?
Till today I was using ubuntu 13.04 in my windows7/ubuntu dual boot. Just now I have upgraded to ubuntu 14.04. My software updater showed an updates available message. I proceeded with Install Now . Soon I got the following window.
Then I tried sudo apt-get clean as recommended. Nothing happened! Not even a window opened. Teach me deleting the temporary packages.
Deleting temporary files may not be highly helpful in case of further updates and installs for I don’t have too much space left in my /. I wanna extend my / partition with the help of the unallocated space in my HD. The following is my Gparted window.
I got an answer here. But it wasn’t useful for me. I had two choices. But the answer wasn’t working for both my chioces.
Choice 1: I may use the 4.25 GiB unallocated space to extend my /dev/sda10. To do so, I must need to move my linux-swap partition. But my Resize/Move option is disabled for the linux-swap partition. Choice 1 failed!
Choice 2: I may use the 14.35 GiB unallocated space instead. In this case I must move more than one partition. /dev/sda4 partition is the first on the list. Even that partition has the same problem. Resize/Move option is disabled. Choice 2 failed!
I am out of choices now.
What shall I do? Help me to extend my / with Gparted.
2 Answers 2
You actually can use the 4.25 GiB at the end without any reboot, because Linux supports on-line partition resizing since kernel 2.6 (meaning you can resize partitions while they’re mounted, even the root partition, without any reboot).
I’ll show you how to remove the swap partition and extend the root partition with all the free space at the end. Then I’ll use the unallocated space in the beginning (14.35 GiB) for a new swap partition. Of course 14.35 GiB is a bit much so you can also choose to use some to extend your NTFS partition.
Right click on /dev/sda11 and select Swapoff
Right click on /dev/sda11 and select Delete
Click on Apply All Operations
Extend the root partition:
Go back to GParted
Open the GParted menu and click on Refresh Devices
Right click on the unallocated space and select New
Select linux-swap as file system
Click on Apply All Operations
Initially I wrote this using the command line only, but then I decided to try to use GParted as much as possible as this may be easier for you to see what’s going on. You may even extend the root partition using GParted. But you need to unmount your root partition before you work on it. I mean you should work offline (using a liveUSB). In some cases your grub may get damaged. So do reinstall your grub before you leave out from your offline working.
I believe GParted will automatically enable the new swap partition but I’m not sure. You can always check by right clicking on it and then selecting Swapon . If this option is not available the swap partitions is probably already enabled.
Also the Refresh Devices step is probably unnecessary, but you should follow it just to be sure.
We cannot resize the extended partition ( sda4 , in this case) as it has a mounted logical partition within it. So we need to boot into the live mode of an Ubuntu USB/CD drive. From there, start GParted, turn off swap if necessary, right click on the extended partition and resize it to suit your needs. Then, follow the steps mentioned as needed to resize root and add back swap. In the event that your root partition UUID gets changed, you can update Grub by executing these steps in the live mode:
The first command couple of commands mount the root partition ( sda10 , in this case) and sets up /dev/ for use within a chroot environment. (Other partitions that can be similarly mounted for a more functional chroot are /proc , /sys and /dev/pts .) Then we reinstall grub (not really necessary). Then, we enter the chroot and update grub. This causes grub to use the new UUIDs where necessary. After exiting the chroot, reboot and we should get the grub menu back.
2 easy methods to extend/shrink resize primary partition in Linux
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Earlier I had shared steps to create a file system and check file system type in Linux . Now in this article I will share the steps to resize primary partition, here we will extend non lvm root partition. With LVM it is far more easier and less riskier to change size of partition in an volume group in Linux .
- This article covers steps to resize primary partition (non-lvm) which can be dangerous and can leave your Linux system in an unusable broken state. It is important that you backup your content before you attempt to change size of partition.
- You can change size of partition (non-lvm) only on the last partition on the storage device with unallocated space. If the respective partition is not the last partition then the only way to expand partition is to backup your data , rebuild the disk and partitions, then restore the data. No tool such as gparted, parted or fdisk can help you change size of partition in such case.
- You must have some unallocated space or free space available in the concerned device to be able to expand partition. In some of the virtual environment you have an option to change the storage device size but on physical node if there is no enough unallocated space then resize primary partition (extend non lvm root partition) is not possible
- This article assumes you’re using either a GPT partition table, or an msdos partition table using primary partition types to extend non lvm root partition.
Lab Environment to resize primary partition (RHEL/CentOS 7/8) in Linux
I have performed resize primary partition operation on Virtual Machine running on Oracle VirtualBox installed on Linux server . My VM is running with CentOS 8 but I have also verified these steps on RHEL/CentOS 7 and RHEL 8 Linux.
Here my VM is installed on /dev/sda device where /dev/sda1 is boot partition, /dev/sda2 is root while /dev/sda3 is for swap.. Additionally I have left some unallocated free space in /dev/sda for the demonstration of this article to extend non lvm root partition.
Method 1: Change size of partition using parted CLI utility
You can either use gparted (GUI utility) or parted (CLI utility) to change size of partition in Linux. Here we plan to resize primary partition which in our case is /dev/sda.
List available partitions
To list the available partitions in /dev/sda we will execute below command
As I mentioned in the disclaimer section, you can change size of partition only on the last partition of the device but here root partition ( /dev/sda2 ) is not the last one instead swap ( /dev/sda3 ) is my last partition. So to expand root partition I must delete swap device to be able to to use unallocated space and extend non lvm root partition. After deleting swap, root partition will become the last partition on /dev/sda after which we can resize primary partition.
Disable swap partition
Currently I have around 1GB reserved for swap partition
I will turn off my swap (disable swap partition) and use this space to extend non lvm root partition in Linux
Verify the swap partition space, as you see not it is 0
Update /etc/fstab to make sure swap partition is not mounted at boot up stage.
Delete swap and expand partition
Now to resize primary partition /dev/sda2 and expand partition to a new value we must first delete swap partition using parted utility. As we need root partition to be the last partition of /dev/sda before we expand partition.
But our root partition is showing the same size as earlier i.e.
To complete the steps to resize non lvm root partition, execute resizefs to expand partition and refresh the changes
Re-verify the new size of root partition to make sure our steps to extend non lvm root partition was successful.
Re-create swap partition
Now we must create Swap partition which we deleted earlier in this article. We will again use parted utility to create swap partition
Now with parted we only created a partition with file system type as swap. Use mkswap to turn this partition into swap.
Next we must update /etc/fstab with the UUID of our new swap partition. To get the new UUID of swap partition
Update this UUID in /etc/fstab as shown below
Finally turn on the new swap partition
Verify the new swap partition
Now you can reboot your Linux server to make sure everything is OK and resize primary partition was successful.
Method 2: Change size of partition using fdisk utility
Similar to parted command, you can also use fdisk utility to resize primary partition and extend non lvm root partition.
List available partitions
Before we resize primary partition, let us list the available partitions
Now as you see my existing root partition /dev/sda2 size is
10G . Here we will expand partition with +1GB using unallocated disk space from /dev/sda .
Delete swap partition
Currently my swap partition is enabled and is the last partition of /dev/sda . So we must first delete swap partition here before we change size of partition as we need root to be the last partition in /dev/sda
So we will turn off the swap partition before we disable it
Now it is time to use fdisk utility to resize partition
Part 1 — Resize root partition
We will continue with the steps to extend non lvm root partition in the same fdisk session. Note down the start sector of the root partition before you expand partition.
Create swap partition
After we resize primary partition, in the same fdisk session we will also create a new swap partition which we had deleted initially with new start and end sector
Update the kernel regarding the recent changes we did to change size of partition
But our swap partition is still shown as 0
Now let us complete our steps to create swap partition using mkswap
Next update /etc/fstab with the UUID for your new swap partition. You can use blkid to get the UUID
Update the same in /etc/fstab as shown below
Now you can turn on the swap partition
Verify the same using free command
Part 2 — Resize root partition
If not done already in above steps, once you exit fdisk utility, update the kernel regarding the recent changes we did to change size of partition
We are not done with resize primary partition, as df command still shows old partition size for root partition
Execute resize2fs to expand partition on /dev/sda2 with the new changes
Now you can verify the new size of root partition
Lastly I hope the steps from the article to resize primary partition and extend non lvm root partition on RHEL/CentOS 7/8 Linux was helpful. So, let me know your suggestions and feedback using the comment section.