This Document will show you the essential steps to repartition your VM disk. For this purpose we are using an Ubuntu 18.04 server as example with the m1c.tiny flavor.
We strongly recommend to use the automatic approach but for instructional use we are also covering the manual process here.
By default cloudinit will grow your VM image partition size to the complete size of the ephemeral disk (which is defined by the flavor you used for your VM). To avoid this behavior and use the spare space for a new partition we will use following snippet :
#cloud-config
growpart:
mode: off
runcmd:
# Parted asks whether to fix /dev/vda to use all available space, we reply "Fix" and continue
# Resize primary partition to 10GiB
- "printf 'Fix\n1\nyes\n10GB\n' | parted ---pretend-input-tty /dev/vda resizepart"
# Prepare partitions
- "parted -s /dev/vda mkpart DATA ext4 10GB 20GB"
- "parted -s /dev/vda mkpart DATA ext4 20GB 50GB"
# Configure new partitions
- "echo $(parted /dev/vda -s print|grep DATA |awk '/^\ *[0-9]+/{print $1}') > /partition_nums.txt"
- "for i in $(cat /partition_nums.txt); do mkfs.ext4 /dev/vda${i}; done"
- "for i in $(cat /partition_nums.txt); do e2label /dev/vda${i} DATA${i}; done"
- "for i in $(cat /partition_nums.txt); do mkdir -p /mnt/disks/data${i}; done"
- "for i in $(cat /partition_nums.txt); do mount -t ext4 /dev/vda${i} /mnt/disks/data${i}; done"
- "for i in $(cat /partition_nums.txt); do echo LABEL=DATA${i} /mnt/disks/data${i} ext4 defaults 0 0 | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab; done"
# System is not aware of new space on main partition. Needs refresh.
- "resize2fs /dev/vda1"This snippet was written for a Ubuntu 18.04 VM with a 50GiB ephemeral disk. It will resize the main partition to 10 GiB and create 2 new partitions (10 GiB and 30 GiB), create an ext-4 filesystem and mount them.
Using the OpenStack dashboard to start your VM you may provide this snippet in the Customization Script box located in the Configuration tab. If you prefer to use the CLI to bring up the VM, you can use the --user-data option to provide the cloud-config file containing the snippet.
Inside of the provisioned VM you may see the following :
ubuntu@partition-test:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 985M 0 985M 0% /dev
tmpfs 200M 648K 199M 1% /run
/dev/vda1 8.9G 1.1G 7.9G 12% /
tmpfs 997M 0 997M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 997M 0 997M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/vda15 105M 3.6M 101M 4% /boot/efi
/dev/vda2 9.2G 37M 8.6G 1% /mnt/disks/data2
/dev/vda3 28G 45M 26G 1% /mnt/disks/data3
tmpfs 200M 0 200M 0% /run/user/1000In contrast to the automatic disk partioning, we will do the steps by hand which would be needed to create a new partition. All we need to do is to tell cloudinit via user-data to not grow the initial VM image partition.
#cloud-config
growpart:
mode: offThe following steps will guide you through the process of manually creating a separate partition.
To be able to check the partitions we need to use ssh to connect to the VM. We further need to get root rights. Having done so, we can see the following :
$ root@partition-test:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 798M 648K 798M 1% /run
/dev/vda1 2.0G 1.1G 948M 53% /
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/vda15 105M 3.6M 101M 4% /boot/efi
tmpfs 798M 0 798M 0% /run/user/1000
$ root@partition-test:~# parted /dev/vda --script "print free"
Warning: Not all of the space available to /dev/vda appears to be used, you can fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra 100245504 blocks) or continue with the current setting?
Model: Virtio Block Device (virtblk)
Disk /dev/vda: 53.7GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
17.4kB 1049kB 1031kB Free Space
14 1049kB 5243kB 4194kB bios_grub
15 5243kB 116MB 111MB fat32 boot, esp
1 116MB 2361MB 2245MB ext4
2361MB 53.7GB 51.3GB Free Space
root@partition-test:~#As we can see, our partitation /dev/vda1 did not grow and got the original size of the image itself. In consequence we have 51,3GB free space, which we may use for our new partition.
In order to use the free space, we have to relocate the backup data structures to the end of the disk. We are using gdisk in expert mode to do so.
root@partition-test:~# gdisk
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3
Type device filename, or press <Enter> to exit: /dev/vda
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/vda: 104857600 sectors, 50.0 GiB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): C2EE45B5-56B2-4257-8BB5-E271FA3DD857
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 4612062
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2014 sectors (1007.0 KiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 227328 4612062 2.1 GiB 8300
14 2048 10239 4.0 MiB EF02
15 10240 227327 106.0 MiB EF00
Command (? for help): x
Expert command (? for help): e
Relocating backup data structures to the end of the disk
Expert command (? for help): m
Command (? for help):The next step is to create our new partition. We will use all the free space and create a new /dev/vda2 partition.
Command (? for help): n
Partition number (2-128, default 2): 2
First sector (34-104857566, default = 4612096) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (4612096-104857566, default = 104857566) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Current type is 'Linux filesystem'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = 8300):
Changed type of partition to 'Linux filesystem'
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/vda: 104857600 sectors, 50.0 GiB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): C2EE45B5-56B2-4257-8BB5-E271FA3DD857
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 104857566
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2047 sectors (1023.5 KiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 227328 4612062 2.1 GiB 8300
2 4612096 104857566 47.8 GiB 8300 Linux filesystem
14 2048 10239 4.0 MiB EF02
15 10240 227327 106.0 MiB EF00
Command (? for help): w
Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!
Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): Y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/vda.
Warning: The kernel is still using the old partition table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot or after you
run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)
The operation has completed successfully.To be able to see the new partition we need to reload the partition table.
root@partition-test:~# partprobe
root@partition-test:~# ls /dev | grep vda2
vda2Now that we have our new partition, the next step is to create a filesystem on it. We will go with ext4 in this example.
# Lets create an ext4 filesystem
root@partition-test:/home/ubuntu# mkfs.ext4 /dev/vda2
mke2fs 1.44.1 (24-Mar-2018)
Creating filesystem with 12530683 4k blocks and 3137536 inodes
Filesystem UUID: a6edfdf1-23dd-4b1d-af45-493a8d0fd986
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424
Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (65536 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information:
doneThe very last step is to mount the partition
root@partition-test:~# mount /dev/vda2 /mnt
root@partition-test:~# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
vda 252:0 0 50G 0 disk
├─vda1 252:1 0 2.1G 0 part /
├─vda2 252:2 0 47.8G 0 part /mnt
├─vda14 252:14 0 4M 0 part
└─vda15 252:15 0 106M 0 part /boot/efiIf you want the mount to be persistent after a reboot you also have to adjust the fstab configuration file.
root@partition-test:~# blkid /dev/vda2
/dev/vda2: UUID="8b1aba77-feb7-4bdb-83e8-35879411059c" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="Linux filesystem" PARTUUID="8adfef00-93d8-4b05-944e-cce09bb66f3a"
echo "UUID=8b1aba77-feb7-4bdb-83e8-35879411059c /mnt ext4 defaults 0 0" >> /etc/fstabWe have started a VM using custom user data which prevents the growing of the VM root partition to the complete size of the ephemeral disk. Afterwards we have used the resulting free disk space to create a custom partition. In the end we have created a new ext4 filesystem on the new partition and mounted it so we can use it.