Technical Guide: Online XFS Filesystem Expansion using LVM and Parted

This technical document details the successful procedure for expanding a full XFS filesystem at the mount point /opt/repo/main on the server mylnxsrv. The process involves a complete online expansion of the storage stack layers: the physical partition, the LVM Physical Volume (PV), the LVM Logical Volume (LV), and finally the XFS filesystem itself.

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1. System overview

The following system specifications were captured on the server mylnxsrv:

• Operating System: Oracle Linux Server release 8.10.

• Kernel: 5.15.0-319.201.4.2.el8uek.x86_64.

• Hypervisor: VMware (Full Virtualization).

• CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6130 CPU @ 2.10GHz (4 Cores).

• Memory: 5.6 GB Total (approx. 4.1 GB available).

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2. Initial state assessment

The mount point /opt/repo/main reached 100% utilization, with only 93MB available, causing a critical storage shortage. While the underlying disk /dev/sda had its capacity increased at the hypervisor level to 1074GB, the internal partition sda1 and the LVM layers remained at 537GB.

Filesystem configuration (/etc/fstab)

The system uses XFS for its primary data repository. XFS is a high-performance, 64-bit journaling filesystem that supports online resizing.

/dev/mapper/ol-root       /                        xfs     defaults        0 0
UUID=c7f69...             /boot                    xfs     defaults        0 0
UUID=F3F4-5A30            /boot/efi                vfat    umask=0077...   0 2
/dev/mapper/ol-swap       none                     swap    defaults        0 0
UUID=c08f75...            /opt/repo/main           xfs     defaults        0 0

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3. Step-by-step extension procedure

Step A: Resize the partition

Command: parted /dev/sda resizepart 1 100%

The parted command was used to extend partition 1 to occupy 100% of the newly available disk space.

• Status before: sda1 size was 537GB.

• Status after: sda1 size increased to 1074GB.

Step B: Resize the LVM physical volume (PV)

Command: pvresize /dev/sda1

This command notifies the LVM layer that the underlying partition size has changed.

• Status after: pvs confirmed that <1000.00g was now recognized, with 500.00g of Physical Free space (PFree) available for use.

Step C: Extend the logical volume (LV)

Command: lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/mapper/vg_repos-lv_main

This extends the Logical Volume to consume all newly available free space in the Volume Group (vg_repos).

• Status After: lvs showed the lv_main size increased from <500.00g to <1000.00g.

Step D: Grow the XFS filesystem

Command: xfs_growfs /opt/repo/main

Since XFS supports online resizing, this command expands the filesystem to fill the newly enlarged Logical Volume while it remains mounted and active.

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4. Final verification

The storage stack now fully reflects the 1000GB (approx. 1TB) capacity. Disk utilization for the repository has been reduced from 100% to 51%.

Final filesystem status:

[root@mylnxsrv ~]# df -h /opt/repo/main
Filesystem                    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg_repos-lv_main  1000G  504G  497G  51% /opt/repo/main

Final block device status (lsblk):

sda                    8:0    0 1000G  0 disk 
└─sda1                 8:1    0 1000G  0 part 
  └─vg_repos-lv_main 252:2    0 1000G  0 lvm  /opt/repo/main

Note: For XFS filesystems, always target the mount point with the grow command rather than the block device path. Unlike ext4, targeting the device path (/dev/mapper/...) can result in an error.