Re: Grow Filesystems Dynamically

From: Vlad (vgrama_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 06/02/04 

Date: 2 Jun 2004 01:03:04 -0700

Hi,

Indeed you can grow the / filesystem without VxVM or SDS.

The prerequisites are:
-> to have unused space on the disk that contains the / slice AFTER
the / slice
   if you only have space before the / file system that's of no use

-> the filesystem must be locked (see lockfs) while being grown. I
didn't
   try with root fs so don't know if it can be locked while being
mounted
   if not then you must boot from CDROM to grow it

How you can do it:
1) make a copy of your VTOC with prtvtoc "/dev/rdsk/c_t_d_s2" so that
if you
   make a mistake while using format you can get back to a working
config

2) with format chose the appropriate disk, then "partition" and then
modify
   the / slice by choosing its number. leave the start cylinder as it
is
   and specify a bigger size.

3) save the new VTOC and check if all UFS filesystems on the system
disk can be
   mounted (if they can't and they could before then you probably did
something
   wrong with format and you must relabel the disk with the good VTOC
saved
   in 1)

4) if all ok now you can grow the / file system to the size of the
slice
   using growfs (see the man page)

Anyone would probably tell you that if you have important data on the
system disk we're talking about you should first back up all it's
filesystems up.

Also you usually don't happen to have space after the / partition. One
could shrink the swap in order to gain some space. But the swap is at
the beginning of the disk so that's no use in this case either.

Good luck,
Vlad Grama.

powere2e@yahoo.com (Life Learner) wrote in message news:<f966c546.0406011700.5e26f1c@posting.google.com>...
> hi,
>
> I am wondering on Solaris is it possible to expand filesystems
> INCLUDING / when they are mounted (in use) without the help of SDS or
> VxVM, I think it is not possible, but an experienced Solaris guy said
> he could do this by simply repartitioning the corresponding
> partition(providing that there is room adjacent to it) and then
> growing the filesystem via an undocumented function of newfs. This
> makes me very confused, can this be done safely on a production box
> even when the filesystem is in use? especially for root?
>
> Thank you very much.

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