Extend a Partition

After upgrading your VPS storage, you need to extend the partition to use the additional space.

Prerequisites

Always backup your data before modifying disk partitions.

Extension Steps

Identify disk and partition

List available disks and partitions:

lsblk

Note the device name (e.g., /dev/vda) and partition number (e.g., 1 for /dev/vda1).

Extend the partition

Use growpart to extend the partition:

sudo growpart /dev/vda 1

Replace /dev/vda and 1 with your actual device and partition number.

Verify partition extension

Run lsblk again to confirm the partition shows the increased size.

Resize the filesystem

Extend the filesystem to use the new space:

sudo resize2fs /dev/vda1

Replace /dev/vda1 with your actual partition.

Verify the changes

Check disk space usage:

df -h

Your partition should now show the increased size.

The growpart tool extends the partition, while resize2fs or xfs_growfs extends the filesystem to use the new space.

If growpart is not installed:

sudo apt install cloud-guest-utils

sudo yum install cloud-utils-growpart

ext4 filesystem

Most common Linux filesystem. Use resize2fs:

sudo resize2fs /dev/vda1

XFS filesystem

Default on CentOS/Rocky/Alma. Use xfs_growfs:

sudo xfs_growfs /dev/vda1

To check your filesystem type, run: df -Th