In a previous post I demonstrated how to increase the size of an ext4 filesystem in RHEL 6/CentOS 6. In this post I will demonstrate how to shrink or reduce the size of an ext4 filesystem in RHEL 6/CentOS 6. As part of this shrink process I will also remove one of the disks in the Volume Group that the filesystem we are shrinking is part of.
My Environment
Let me briefly confirm the environment I am using for this demo. My server is a VMware VM and the OS is Centos 6.6, it presently contains 5 virtual disks:
All the virtual disks are in use and the system comprises multiple filesystems. We are going to use the filesystem /var/video to demonstrate how to shrink a filesystem.
The Shrink Process
Please note that you should stop any applications first and then unmount the filesystem before proceeding with the steps below. I would also ensure that you back up the system prior to any shrinking activity.
The process required to reduce a filesystem starts at the top layer, with the filesystem itself. It must be reduced, then the Logical Volume is reduced. If required the Volume Group can also be reduced if the ultimate goal is to remove Physical Volumes from the system. The order of this process is shown below:
Filesystems --> Logical Volumes --> Volume Groups --> Physical Volumes
So without further ado, let’s crack on with the shrinking process.
1. Check the current size of the filesystem by running df -h:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
18G 908M 16G 6% /
tmpfs 939M 0 939M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 477M 25M 427M 6% /boot
/dev/mapper/data-music
9.8G 4.4G 4.9G 48% /var/music
/dev/mapper/data-video
9.8G 4.4G 4.9G 47% /var/video
/dev/mapper/data-pictures
4.8G 10M 4.6G 1% /var/pictures
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]#
To see the usage in Megabytes run df -m:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# df -m
Filesystem 1M-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
17519 908 15715 6% /
tmpfs 939 0 939 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 477 25 427 6% /boot
/dev/mapper/data-music
9952 4441 4999 48% /var/music
/dev/mapper/data-pictures
4888 10 4624 1% /var/pictures
/dev/mapper/data-video
9944 4430 5003 47% /var/video
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]#
We can see that /var/video is 9.8GB in size and is using 47% of its total capacity. We want to reduce /var/video down to 4.5GB in size.
2. Run e2fsk first to perform a filesystem check:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# e2fsck -f /dev/data/video e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010) Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes Pass 2: Checking directory structure Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity Pass 4: Checking reference counts Pass 5: Checking group summary information /dev/data/video: 12/655360 files (0.0% non-contiguous), 1207792/2619392 blocks
3. Run resize2fs to shrink the filesystem to your desired size:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# resize2fs /dev/data/video 4800M resize2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010) Resizing the filesystem on /dev/data/video to 1228800 (4k) blocks. The filesystem on /dev/data/video is now 1228800 blocks long.
I have resized the device /dev/data/video to 4800MB. To change the unit of size to Gigabytes change M to G.
4. Run lvreduce to shrink the Logical Volume to a size slightly larger than the filesystem. In step 3 we shrunk the filesystem to 4800MB so we will shrink the Logical Volume video to a slightly larger size. We will therefore reduce it to 4900MB:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# lvreduce -L 4900M /dev/data/video WARNING: Reducing active logical volume to 4.79 GiB THIS MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA (filesystem etc.) Do you really want to reduce video? [y/n]: y Size of logical volume data/video changed from 9.99 GiB (2558 extents) to 4.79 GiB (1225 extents). Logical volume video successfully resized [root@lnx-svr-01 ~]#
5. So the shrink process is complete. Let’s mount the filesystem:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# mount /var/video/
6. Now run df -h to see the new size of the /var/video filesystem:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
18G 908M 16G 6% /
tmpfs 939M 0 939M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 477M 25M 427M 6% /boot
/dev/mapper/data-music
9.8G 4.4G 4.9G 48% /var/music
/dev/mapper/data-pictures
4.8G 10M 4.6G 1% /var/pictures
/dev/mapper/data-video
4.5G 4.4G 0 100% /var/video
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]#
7. We know that we have reduced the Logical Volume video from 9.8GB to 4.5GB, so we now have 5.3GB of free space in the Volume Group data. Run vgdisplay to confirm the amount of free space in the Volume Group data:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# vgdisplay /dev/data --- Volume group --- VG Name data System ID Format lvm2 Metadata Areas 4 Metadata Sequence No 11 VG Access read/write VG Status resizable MAX LV 0 Cur LV 3 Open LV 3 Max PV 0 Cur PV 4 Act PV 4 VG Size 24.97 GiB PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 6392 Alloc PE / Size 5059 / 19.76 GiB Free PE / Size 1333 / 5.21 GiB VG UUID IglQep-hydn-lm2D-Dc1N-LsL4-edpi-BzgMuE [root@lnx-svr-01 ~]#
We can see that there are 1333 extents or 5.21GB of free space in the Volume Group data.
8. Run pvdisplay to show all Physical Volumes on the system:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# pvdisplay --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sdb1 VG Name data PV Size 4.99 GiB / not usable 2.41 MiB Allocatable yes PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 1278 Free PE 2 Allocated PE 1276 PV UUID OpA0C8-wv7K-0cZT-3zHW-GXeb-YLM8-hWbRjL --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sdc1 VG Name data PV Size 10.00 GiB / not usable 4.70 MiB Allocatable yes (but full) PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 2558 Free PE 0 Allocated PE 2558 PV UUID VC7As8-pB3U-GGqa-l0xg-NIVj-jv7l-dTGGHl --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sdd1 VG Name data PV Size 4.99 GiB / not usable 2.41 MiB Allocatable yes PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 1278 Free PE 53 Allocated PE 1225 PV UUID xKOs8i-UQy1-mpvu-8Hhl-zjF4-FYjb-w4DwSu --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sde1 VG Name data PV Size 4.99 GiB / not usable 2.41 MiB Allocatable yes PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 1278 Free PE 1278 Allocated PE 0 PV UUID s1XEBf-PCbp-fygl-yVc0-BySI-32FM-mu3laE --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sda2 VG Name VolGroup PV Size 19.51 GiB / not usable 3.00 MiB Allocatable yes (but full) PE Size 4.00 MiB Total PE 4994 Free PE 0 Allocated PE 4994 PV UUID tx5fGZ-LURm-Bqgq-Jxqz-AuJD-IWgl-YMxPle [root@lnx-svr-01 ~]#
We can see that Volume Group data comprises of /dev/sdb1 – /dev/sde1. The only Physical Volume that has no data on it is /dev/sde1. We know this because it has no Allocated PEs (Physical Extents) and also that the Free PE equals = Total PE, meaning that all the extents that comprise /dev/sde1 are free:
Total PE 1278 Free PE 1278 Allocated PE 0
9. So if no data actually resides on Physical Volume /dev/sde1 we we need to remove it from Volume Group data. To do this run vgreduce per the below:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# vgreduce data /dev/sde1 Removed "/dev/sde1" from volume group "data" [root@lnx-svr-01 ~]#
10. To remove Physical Volume /dev/sde1 run pvremove per the below:
[root@lnx-svr-01 ~]# pvremove /dev/sde1 Labels on physical volume "/dev/sde1" successfully wiped [root@lnx-svr-01 ~]#
So we are at a stage where the virtual disk that maps to /dev/sde can be removed. Although I know that Hard Disk 5 maps to /dev/sde (because I added it in a previous post) that doesn’t mean that the order of disks in Linux matches up with the order of disks in VMware – often they don’t match up.
11. To verify the virtual disk to linux disk mapping run the ls command per the below to list all the disks in the system:
[root@lnx-svr-01 video]# ls -l /sys/block/sd* lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Jun 14 15:02 /sys/block/sda -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/0000:03:00.0/host2/port-2:0/end_device-2:0/target2:0:0/2:0:0:0/block/sda lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Jun 14 15:02 /sys/block/sdb -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/0000:03:00.0/host2/port-2:1/end_device-2:1/target2:0:1/2:0:1:0/block/sdb lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Jun 14 15:02 /sys/block/sdc -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/0000:03:00.0/host2/port-2:2/end_device-2:2/target2:0:2/2:0:2:0/block/sdc lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Jun 14 15:02 /sys/block/sdd -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/0000:03:00.0/host2/port-2:3/end_device-2:3/target2:0:3/2:0:3:0/block/sdd lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 0 Jun 14 18:05 /sys/block/sde -> ../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/0000:03:00.0/host2/port-2:4/end_device-2:4/target2:0:4/2:0:4:0/block/sde [root@lnx-svr-01 video]#
From the above we see the bottom line relates to disk /sde. The important bit is at the end of the line; 2:0:4:0/block/sde. The numbers highlighted in red represent the SCSI-controller-no:Target-no which we require to identify the virtual disk in VMware. This corresponds to Hard Disk 5 in the VM:
So we definitely know that Hard Disk 5 maps to /dev/sde. As it is has been removed from LVM we can remove it from the VM now:
The Happy Ending
Process over, you can breathe a sigh of relief! I will re-iterate that you should ensure that you have up-to-date backups of the system prior to any shrinking activity – you can never be too safe.
Reference(s):
How to Find corresponding VMDK in Linux/UNIX