Lvm – Extend root logical volume for VM with Oracle Linux of VMWare

lvmrootvirtual-machines

Please make me sure did I wrong thing, or not.

I'm resizing the root partition which is under the LVM. This server is a VMWare's virtual machine with Oracle Linux. I'm using this article: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1006371

I think I made a mistake. After 2nd part I booted the VM in a rescue mode, checked that size was the same. Then I recreated 3rd partition (root under LVM) and gave its type as 8e for LVM. I received a partition with the same start point and extended last point. I wrote changes of frisk.

Then I executed pvcreate /dev/sda3 command. It didn't allowed me to do this without -ff key.

So, I made a mistake and can't turn back. I didn't rebooted yet, I passed the system in rescue mode for a time.

Please give an advising is it possible to cancel this situation and make corrections?

Thank you.

Best Answer

You had everything right, up until pvcreate. It's not necessary to do this if you resized the existing disk partition instead of creating a new one. If you actually ran it with the force flag, then it destroyed all your data. If you did not, then you are safe.

The next step, of course, is to restart the system and lvextend -r your desired logical volume. (-r here automatically resizes the filesystem in the logical volume, so you don't have to do that separately as the outdated KB article indicates.)

Related Solutions

Debian Lenny – SAN – LVM Fail

I once ran into a similar problem. In our case, someone created a partition to hold the PV, but when they ran the pvcreate command, they forgot to specify the partition and instead used the whole device. The system ran fine until a reboot, when LVM could no longer find the PV.

So in your case, is it possible that someone ran "pvcreate /dev/mapper/mpath0" at the time of creation rather than "pvcreate /dev/mapper/mpath0-part1"? If so, you'll need to remove the partition table from the disk containing the PV.

From the pvcreate(8) man page to delete a partition table:

dd if=/dev/zero of=PhysicalVolume bs=512 count=1

The LVM code in the kernel will not recognize a whole device PV if there is a partition table on the device. Once we removed the partition table, the PV was recognized and we could access our data again.

Lvm – Resizing logical volume on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.6

Do the following:

 1. use fdisk create a new primary partition using the available open space.  
    For this example it would be /dev/sda3.  
 2. pvcreate /dev/sda3 to set it up
 3. vgextend /dev/VolGroup00 /dev/sda3
 4. do a vgdisplay and see how many open extents you have on VolGroup00.  
    For this example assume 407 extents are open
 5. lvextend -l +407 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
 6. resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 (assumming ext2/ext3)

This procedure should work without having to unmount the root disk if you are using a Linux 2.6 kernel.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Debian Lenny – SAN – LVM Fail

Lvm – Resizing logical volume on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.6

Related Topic