Resizing a Fedora VM Disk

Writing this down since I had such a hard time finding all the pieces. This procedure is for expanding the disk of a Fedora (in this case Fedora Server 35) virtual machine using LVM and XFS (the default). I use VMs on ESXi, but this should apply to any Fedora VM scenario.

1. Expand the disk in your virtualization system, in ESXi I chose the VM, then click Edit, then increase the size next to the Hard Disk.

   

2. Use lsblk to determine which disk holds your root filesystem:

   ; lsblk
   

   On my system, it outputs the following table:

   Name	Major:Minor	Rm	Size	Read-Only	Type	Mount Points
   sda	8:0	0	32GB	0	disk
   ↳sda1	8:1	0	1G	0	part	/boot
   ↳sda2	8:2	0	15G	0	part
   ↳ fedora_fedora-root	253:0	0	15G	0	lvm	/

   plus the CD-ROM and swap partitions.

   This table gives us some valuable information. The / filesystem we want to expand is an Logical Volume Manager (LVM) volume called root within a Volume Group called fedora_fedora. The logical volume group is atop the physical partition /dev/sda2, which is a partition of the disk /dev/sda. We can see the effects of our expansion at the disk level, but we need to propagate it through the partiton, the LVM Physical Volume within our Volume Group, the LVM Logical Volume, and the fileystem.

3. Use parted to increase the partition size of /dev/sda¹.

   ; sudo parted /dev/sda
   

   Within parted, use print to list your volumes:

   (parted) print
   Model: VMware Virtual disk (scsi)
   Disk /dev/sda: 34.4GB
   Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
   Partiton Table: msdos
   Disk Flags:
   

   It will then print the following table:

   Number	Start	End	Size	Type	File system	Flags
   1	1049kB	1075MB	1074MB	primary	xfs	boot
   2	1075MB	17.2GB	16.1GB	primary		lvm

   Resize partiton number two, which backs LVM, with the size reported next to Disk /dev/sda: above:

   (parted) resizepart 2 34.4GB
   

   Print the updated table:

   (parted) print
   

   Number	Start	End	Size	Type	File system	Flags
   1	1049kB	1075MB	1074MB	primary	xfs	boot
   2	1075MB	34.4GB	33.3GB	primary		lvm

   Then exit:

   (parted) quit
   

   Now running lsbk outputs the following:

   Name	Major:Minor	Rm	Size	Read-Only	Type	Mount Points
   sda	8:0	0	32GB	0	disk
   ↳sda1	8:1	0	1G	0	part	/boot
   ↳sda2	8:2	0	31G	0	part
   ↳ fedora_fedora-root	253:0	0	15G	0	lvm	/

4. Extend the LVM Physical Volume² by running:

   ; sudo pvresize /dev/sda2
   Physical volume "/dev/sda2" changed
   1 physical volume(s) resized or updated / 0 physical volume(s) not resized
   

   This will reflect the available space in /dev/sda2 as free space within the LVM Volume Group.

5. Extend the logical volume by running:

   ; sudo lvextend -l+100%FREE fedora_fedora/root
   

   which extends the LVM Logical Volume root within the Volume Group fedora_fedora.

6. Extend the filesystem³:

   ; sudo xfs_growfs /
   ...
   data blocks changed from 3931136 to 8125440
   

   at this point df -h will show the new size of our filesystem.

I attempted to use embiggen-disk first, but embiggen-disk / complained that the MBR was an unknown type 8e. The type 8e is an LVM volume.