EC2 Can't resize volume after increasing size

Question

I have followed the steps for resizing an EC2 volume

1. Stopped the instance
2. Took a snapshot of the current volume
3. Created a new volume out of the previous snapshot with a bigger size in the same region
4. Deattached the old volume from the instance
5. Attached the new volume to the instance at the same mount point

Old volume was 5GB and the one I created is 100GB Now, when i restart the instance and run df -h I still see this

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvde1            4.7G  3.5G 1021M  78% /
tmpfs                 296M     0  296M   0% /dev/shm

This is what I get when running

sudo resize2fs /dev/xvde1

The filesystem is already 1247037 blocks long.  Nothing to do!

If I run cat /proc/partitions I see

 202       64  104857600 xvde
 202       65    4988151 xvde1
 202       66     249007 xvde2

From what I understand if I have followed the right steps xvde should have the same data as xvde1 but I don't know how to use it

How can I use the new volume or umount xvde1 and mount xvde instead?

I cannot understand what I am doing wrong

I also tried sudo ifs_growfs /dev/xvde1

xfs_growfs: /dev/xvde1 is not a mounted XFS filesystem

Btw, this a linux box with centos 6.2 x86_64

Thanks in advance for your help

Answer 1

Thank you Wilman your commands worked correctly, small improvement need to be considered if we are increasing EBSs into larger sizes

1. Stop the instance
2. Create a snapshot from the volume
3. Create a new volume based on the snapshot increasing the size
4. Check and remember the current's volume mount point (i.e. /dev/sda1)
5. Detach current volume
6. Attach the recently created volume to the instance, setting the exact mount point
7. Restart the instance

8. Access via SSH to the instance and run fdisk /dev/xvde

   WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u')

9. Hit p to show current partitions

10. Hit d to delete current partitions (if there are more than one, you have to delete one at a time) NOTE: Don't worry data is not lost
11. Hit n to create a new partition
12. Hit p to set it as primary
13. Hit 1 to set the first cylinder
14. Set the desired new space (if empty the whole space is reserved)
15. Hit a to make it bootable
16. Hit 1 and w to write changes
17. Reboot instance OR use partprobe (from the parted package) to tell the kernel about the new partition table
18. Log via SSH and run resize2fs /dev/xvde1
19. Finally check the new space running df -h

Answer 2

There's no need to stop instance and detach EBS volume to resize it anymore!

13-Feb-2017 Amazon announced: "Amazon EBS Update – New Elastic Volumes Change Everything"

The process works even if the volume to extend is the root volume of running instance!

---

---

lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
xvda    202:0    0  16G  0 disk
└─xvda1 202:1    0   8G  0 part /

As you can see /dev/xvda1 is still 8 GiB partition on a 16 GiB device and there are no other partitions on the volume. Let's use "growpart" to resize 8G partition up to 16G:

# install "cloud-guest-utils" if it is not installed already
apt install cloud-guest-utils

# resize partition
growpart /dev/xvda 1

Let's check the result (you can see /dev/xvda1 is now 16G):

lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
xvda    202:0    0  16G  0 disk
└─xvda1 202:1    0  16G  0 part /

Lots of SO answers suggest to use fdisk with delete / recreate partitions, which is nasty, risky, error-prone process especially when we change boot drive.

---

# Check before resizing ("Avail" shows 1.1G):
df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvda1      7.8G  6.3G  1.1G  86% /

# resize filesystem
resize2fs /dev/xvda1

# Check after resizing ("Avail" now shows 8.7G!-):
df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvda1       16G  6.3G  8.7G  42% /

So we have zero downtime and lots of new space to use.
Enjoy!

Update: Update: Use sudo xfs_growfs /dev/xvda1 instead of resize2fs when XFS filesystem.

Answer 3

Prefect comment by jperelli above.

I faced same issue today. AWS documentation does not clearly mention growpart. I figured out the hard way and indeed the two commands worked perfectly on M4.large & M4.xlarge with Ubuntu

sudo growpart /dev/xvda 1
sudo resize2fs /dev/xvda1

Answer 4

[SOLVED]

This is what it had to be done

1. Stop the instance
2. Create a snapshot from the volume
3. Create a new volume based on the snapshot increasing the size
4. Check and remember the current's volume mount point (i.e. /dev/sda1)
5. Detach current volume
6. Attach the recently created volume to the instance, setting the exact mount point
7. Restart the instance
8. Access via SSH to the instance and run fdisk /dev/xvde
9. Hit p to show current partitions
10. Hit d to delete current partitions (if there are more than one, you have to delete one at a time) NOTE: Don't worry data is not lost
11. Hit n to create a new partition
12. Hit p to set it as primary
13. Hit 1 to set the first cylinder
14. Set the desired new space (if empty the whole space is reserved)
15. Hit a to make it bootable
16. Hit 1 and w to write changes
17. Reboot instance
18. Log via SSH and run resize2fs /dev/xvde1
19. Finally check the new space running df -h

This is it

Good luck!

Answer 5

1. sudo growpart /dev/xvda 1
2. sudo resize2fs /dev/xvda1

the above two commands saved my time for AWS ubuntu ec2 instances.

Answer 6

1. login into AWS web console -> EBS -> right mouse click on the one you wish to resize -> "Modify Volume" -> change "Size" field and click [Modify] button

2. growpart /dev/xvda 1

3. resize2fs /dev/xvda1

This is a cut-to-the-chase version of Dmitry Shevkoplyas' answer. AWS documentation does not show the growpart command. This works ok for ubuntu AMI.

Answer 7

This will work for xfs file system just run this command

xfs_growfs /

Answer 8

Just in case if anyone here for GCP google cloud platform ,
Try this:

sudo growpart /dev/sdb 1
sudo resize2fs /dev/sdb1

Answer 9

So in Case anyone had the issue where they ran into this issue with 100% use , and no space to even run growpart command (because it creates a file in /tmp)

Here is a command that i found that bypasses even while the EBS volume is being used , and also if you have no space left on your ec2 , and you are at 100%

/sbin/parted ---pretend-input-tty /dev/xvda resizepart 1 yes 100%

see this site here:

https://www.elastic.co/blog/autoresize-ebs-root-volume-on-aws-amis

Answer 10

Did you make a partition on this volume? If you did, you will need to grow the partition first.

Answer 11

Once you modify the size of your EBS,

List the block devices

sudo lsblk

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1     259:2    0  10G  0 disk
|-nvme0n1p1 259:3    0   1M  0 part
`-nvme0n1p2 259:4    0  10G  0 part /

Expand the partition

Suppose you want to extend the second partition mounted on /,

sudo growpart /dev/nvme0n1 2

If all your space is used up in the root volume and basically you're not able to access /tmp i.e. with error message Unable to growpart because no space left,

1. temporarily mount a /tmp volume: sudo mount -o size=10M,rw,nodev,nosuid -t tmpfs tmpfs /tmp
2. unmount after the complete resize is done: sudo umount -l /tmp

Verify the new size

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1     259:2    0  20G  0 disk
|-nvme0n1p1 259:3    0   1M  0 part
`-nvme0n1p2 259:4    0  10G  0 part /

Resize the file-system

sudo xfs_growfs /

sudo resize2fs /dev/nvme0n1p2

Answer 12

Bootable flag (a) didn't worked in my case (EC2, centos6.5), so i had to re-create volume from snapshot. After repeating all steps EXCEPT bootable flag - everything worked flawlessly so i was able to resize2fs after. Thank you!

Answer 13

Thanks, @Dimitry, it worked like a charm with a small change to match my file system.

source: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-expand-volume.html#recognize-expanded-volume-linux

Then use the following command, substituting the mount point of the filesystem (XFS file systems must be mounted to resize them):

[ec2-user ~]$ sudo xfs_growfs -d /mnt
meta-data=/dev/xvdf              isize=256    agcount=4, agsize=65536 blks
         =                       sectsz=512   attr=2
data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=262144, imaxpct=25
         =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0
log      =internal               bsize=4096   blocks=2560, version=2
         =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
data blocks changed from 262144 to 26214400

Note If you receive an xfsctl failed: Cannot allocate memory error, you may need to update the Linux kernel on your instance. For more information, refer to your specific operating system documentation. If you receive a The filesystem is already nnnnnnn blocks long. Nothing to do! error, see Expanding a Linux Partition.

Answer 14

Don't have enough rep to comment above; but also note per the comments above that you can corrupt your instance if you start at 1; if you hit 'u' after starting fdisk before you list your partitions with 'p' this will infact give you the correct start number so you don't corrupt your volumes. For centos 6.5 AMI, also as mentioned above 2048 was correct for me.

Answer 15

Put space between name and number, ex:

sudo growpart /dev/xvda 1

Note that there is a space between the device name and the partition number.

To extend the partition on each volume, use the following growpart commands. Note that there is a space between the device name and the partition number.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/recognize-expanded-volume-linux.html