Increasing KVM Guest Hard Disk (Hard Drive) Space

Sunday, May 30th, 2021

Increasing KVM Guest Hard Disk (Hard Drive) Space

Increasing the hard drive space in a KVM guest can be rather tricky.  The first step is to shutdown (completely turn off) the guest machine by running the below command from the guest system:

sudo shutdown -h now

Once the guest machine has been turned off (verify it is off by using sudo virt-manager on the host machine to see if it's no longer running), on the host machine, resize the LVM partition by running the following command (and adjust the size as necessary):

sudo lvextend -L+78G /dev/vg_vps/utils

If you need help identifying the name of the disk your guest has been assigned, run this command from the host:

sudo virsh domblklist {VIRSH_NAME_OF_VIRTUAL_MACHINE}

For my example, I would use this command:

sudo virsh domblklist utils

From the host machine, download the GParted live ISO image for your system's architecture (x86 or x64).  Start virt-manager:

sudo virt-manager

Assign a CD drive to the virtual machine you're expanding the hard drive space for, and assign / mount the GParted ISO to it.  Change the boot order so that the KVM guest boots from the CD first.  Save your settings and start the KVM guest virtual machine.  Boot into GParted Live.  GParted will run automatically.  Use GParted to expand the partitions so that they make use of the added storage based on your own preferences.  Apply the resize operation.  Exit GParted and shutdown the virtual machine so that it's off again. Remove the CD drive from the boot options from virt-manager, and then start the KVM guest again. 

If Guest Doesn't Use LVM Partitioning

If your KVM guest virtual machine hasn't been configured to use LVM, the added hard drive space should already be available to your system.  Verify it has been expanded by again running the df -h command.  You're done!

If Guest Uses LVM

Let the OS boot.  From the guest, the file system needs to be resized itself.  You can do this by running the following command to see the current space allocated to your system's partitions:

df -h

You'll see a bunch of output similar to:

Filesystem                  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev                        2.9G     0  2.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs                       597M  8.3M  589M   2% /run
/dev/mapper/utils--vg-root  127G   24G   98G  20% /
tmpfs                       3.0G     0  3.0G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                       5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs                       3.0G     0  3.0G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/vda1                   720M   60M  624M   9% /boot
tmpfs                       597M     0  597M   0% /run/user/1000

You'll notice that the added hard drive space doesn't show up on any of the partitions.  However, it is available to be assigned to these partitions.  To assign additional space, you will need to resize it using these commands (run from the guest virtual machine… the machine you're resizing):

lvextend /dev/mapper/utils--vg-root -L +78G
resize2fs /dev/mapper/utils--vg-root

Obviously, you need to substitute the name of the LVM partition with the one from your system shown in your output of the df -h command.

Resources

https://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/extendlv.htmlMirror if Offline

https://sandilands.info/sgordon/increasing-kvm-virtual-machine-disk-using-lvm-ext4Mirror if Offline

My Favorite Ubuntu Distribution and Software

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

My Favorite Ubuntu Distribution and Software

I run my own personal dedicated server, and I choose Ubuntu to power my server.  But, I don't just use any version of Ubuntu.  I use Ylmf OS, a Windows XP GUI interface Ubuntu 10.04 distribution.  Yes, the Chinese wrote it, but we can all trust the Chinese, right?

Why Do I Use Ylmf OS

I used to be a n00b to Linux a few years back, and I wanted something that looked like Windows XP.  You should be able to tell by now that I love Windows XP and Windows XP x64 with a passion.  Everything just works unlike in Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

List of Best Open Source Software for Ubuntu

  • EHCP Hosting Control Panel – Automatically configures all services you'd need for a dedicated apache2 web server with VSFTPD and includes a fully functional advanced GUI control panel for easy user management, MySQL functionality, subdomains, addon domains, easy install scripts, everything you'd find in CPanel X3, and more!
  • Open Game Panel – An open source game server management panel software.  Allows you and your customers the ability to start, stop, restart, and modify config files for gaming servers on the fly.
  • Mumble Client and Server – Great open source voice over IP client that resembles Teamspeak and has greater functionality.  Install it using:
    sudo apt-get install mumble-server
  • FreeNX – An open source remote SSH GUI login which allows you to remote desktop with encryption without having to learn those nasty ssh commands in the terminal (yes they're simple, but I like the GUI better thanks).

More to come as I think of them.