How to Expand a Solaris File System

Note

Solaris Volume Manager volumes can be expanded. However, volumes cannot be reduced in size.

· A volume can be expanded whether it is used for a file system, application, or database. You can expand RAID-0 (stripe and concatenation) volumes, RAID-1 (mirror) volumes, and RAID-5 volumes and soft partitions.

· You can concatenate a volume that contains an existing file system while the file system is in use. As long as the file system is a UFS file system, the file system can be expanded (with the growfs command) to fill the larger space. You can expand the file system without interrupting read access to the data.

· Once a file system is expanded, it cannot be reduced in size, due to constraints in the UFS file system.

· Applications and databases that use the raw device must have their own method to expand the added space so that they can recognize it. Solaris Volume Manager does not provide this capability.

· When a component is added to a RAID-5 volume, it becomes a concatenation to the volume. The new component does not contain parity information. However, data on the new component is protected by the overall parity calculation that takes place for the volume.

· You can expand a log device by adding additional components. You do not need to run the growfs command, as Solaris Volume Manager automatically recognizes the additional space on reboot.

· Soft partitions can be expanded by adding space from the underlying volume or slice. All other volumes can be expanded by adding slices.

Taken from: http://docs.huihoo.com/opensolaris/solaris-volume-manager-administration-guide/html/ch20s06.html


Steps for expanding filesystem with soft partition:

1. Check Prerequisites

# df -k /local
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/md/dsk/d46 62992061 58223588 4138553 94% /local

# metastat -p d46
d46 -p d50 -o 763363392 -b 117440512 -o 922747008 -b 10485760
d50 -m d49 1
d49 2 2 c8t60060E8004EAEA000000EAEA000027FFd0s6 c8t60060E8004EAEA000000EAEA0000273Bd0s6 -i 32b \
1 c8t60060E8004EAEA000000EAEA000027F7d0s6

# metarecover -n -v /dev/md/rdsk/d50 -p -m | grep FREE
NONE 0 FREE 0 31
NONE 0 FREE 763363360 31
NONE 0 FREE 880803904 31
NONE 0 FREE 922746976 31
NONE 0 FREE 933232768 31
NONE 0 FREE 1008730272 391510367

2. Expand the soft partition

# metattach d46 24gb
d46: Soft Partition has been grown

3. Expand the filesystem

# growfs -M /local /dev/md/rdsk/d46
Warning: 2560 sector(s) in last cylinder unallocated
/dev/md/rdsk/d46: 178257920 sectors in 23211 cylinders of 15 tracks, 512 sectors
87040.0MB in 1658 cyl groups (14 c/g, 52.50MB/g, 6400 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at:
32, 108064, 216096, 324128, 432160, 540192, 648224, 756256, 864288, 972320,
Initializing cylinder groups:
................................
super-block backups for last 10 cylinder groups at:
177192992, 177301024, 177409056, 177517088, 177625120, 177733152, 177841184,
177949216, 178057248, 178165280,

4. Verify filesystem status

# df -k /local
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/md/dsk/d46 87775990 58226660 28919410 67% /local