Debian – /dev/sda1 not in a volume group, and vgextend doesn’t work

debiandisk-volumelvmvirtual-machinesvmware-vsphere

I've got several virtual machines which I access through a VMWare vSphere client (v 5.1.0).
One ran out of space and I'm trying to give it some more space.

What I've done so far:
– Increased provisioned size using "Edit Settings" in the "Summary" tab.
– Created a new partition (/dev/sda3) with Linux LVM system.

The problem is that there's no volume group on the machine earlier, so I can't follow the normal tutorials that tells me to just

vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sda1

when I do, I get the error:

No physical volume label read from /dev/sda1
Can't open /dev/sda1/ exclusively. Mounted filesystem?
Unable to add physical volume '/dev/sda1' to volume group 'VolGroup00'.

I've googled all day, but can't find out how to add /dev/sda1 to my volume group.
It's not in any volume group at all…

Anyone got any hints or pointers?

EDIT:
Some additional data: 

# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 42.9 GB, 42949672960 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5221 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 822580 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optional): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d2064

Device    Boot Start   End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *      1  1998  16043008   83  Linux
/dev/sda2       1998  2089    731137    5  Extended
/dev/sda3       2089  5221  25161490+  8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sda5       1998  2089    731136   82  Linux swap / Solaris


# df -h
Filesystem  Size  Used  Avail  Use%  Mounted on
/dev/sda1    16G   14G   754M   95%  /
tmpfs       4.0G     0   4.0G    0%  /lib/init/rw
udev        4.0G  104K   4.0G    1%  /dev
tmpfs       4.0G     0   4.0G    0%  /dev/shm


# lbslk
-bash: lsblk: command not found


# pvs
PV         VG           Fmt  Attr   PSize   PFree
/dev/sda3  VolGroup00  lvm2  a-     23.99g  23.99g


# vgs
VG          #PV  #LV  #SN  Attr    VSize   VFree
VolGroup00    1    0    0  ws--n-  23.99g  23.99g


# lvs
#
(no output)

Best Answer

Whilst I have no beef with either of the existing answers, I'm not sure I see any reason to complicate this with LVM, given that you don't currently have it. If you're not planning on doing an extension like this again, it may not be worth the pain of introducing LVM now.

An alternative, which is fiddly but doesn't involve rebuilding the machine unless you stuff it up, is to:

  1. Roll back the LVM setup you've done, then do a complete backup
  2. Delete the partition /dev/sda3
  3. Stop the existing swap space with swapoff, then delete the /dev/sda[25] partitions
  4. Recreate the /dev/sda1 partition to span all the existing disc, less some swap space at the top. Do not change the start block of the partition.
  5. Create a /dev/sda2 at the top of the disc, tag it swap, make sure your /etc/fstab reflects the change from sda5 to sda2.
  6. Reboot, then use resize2fs to grow the root file system in situ to fill the new, larger /dev/sda1.
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