Expand/extend disk space in Ubuntu 10.04 in VMware ESX

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 in an VMware ESX environment, and I need to add disk space to the primary partition.

I added the disk space in ESX, and the Ubuntu VM sees it as unallocated space. When I start GParted, it sees the new space as well. However, in GParted it only shows the ext4 partition and the swap, but no extended partition. It will not allow me to add the unallocated space to the primary ext4 (...and relocate the swap to the end).

It there a way around this? Can the new drive be expanded in the primary ext4 partition?

Answer 1

If you are using LVM, you can create PV and then add the spaces to existing VG and the root LV. If Btrfs, just add the device to the volume btrfs device add /dev/sdd /btrfs

But if you are using traditional partitions, it's more complicated.

You can try this: delete the swap partition and try to resize the primary partition (/), reserve some space for swap if you want to create a swap partition (I would use swap file instead).

Another workaround would be using the new virtual HDD as /var or /home (which ever uses most disk space), use rsync -axHAX --progress src dest to copy data over and edit /etc/fstab to complete.

BTW: Capacity Planning is important before your go;-)