Linux – Resize RAID partition with GPT partition layout, without LVM

linuxpartitionraidshrink

OK so I am a freelance sysadmin. I was asked to resize root partion (/) because it was 20Gb and /home was 3Tb.

What I wasn't told is that the server is using RAID and GPT, so I can't use fdisk but will have to use parted, and I don't know if RAID will come into play.

Here is all the parted, df -h, and fstab: http://pastebin.com/RFbQL0qV

Can anyone help ?

Best Answer

As you are using EXT4, it should be possible to shrink the /home/ partition. Let do an example shrinking it to about 2 TB:

  1. unmount your filesystem with umount /dev/md3
  2. check your filesystem with fsck /dev/md3
  3. resize the filesystem with resize2fs /dev/md3 1800G
  4. resize the RAID device with mdadm --grow /dev/md3 --size=1900G Please note that I left the array bigger than the underlying filesystem, by a great margin. This is because the last thing you want is to shrink too much your array, at a point where the underlying filesystem can't fit in it. This is a very bad scenario, with almost 100% guaranteed data loss.
  5. recheck your filesystem with fsck /dev/md3
  6. remount your filesystem and try to read/write to/from it.

Here you can find some other information.

Anyway, if your /dev/md3 device is almost empty, maybe destroying/recreating the array/partitions can both be easier and faster.

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