[CentOS-virt] CentOS Images on AWS with partitions on /dev/xvda1 are awkwared to resize

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

I'm staring at the free CentOS images on AWS, and seeing that whoever
set those up elected to use a partition for /dev/xvda1 rather than
taking advantage of Amazon's tendency to use "/dev/xvda", "/dev/xvdb",
etc. for each disk and use those directly as a file system.

The result is that if you elect to allocate a larger base disk image,
for example allocating 50 Gig to allow local home directories or space
for "mock" or for bulky logs, and don't spend the time to select and
allocate new disk images, it's awkward to simply expand the "/"
partition. And with only 8 Gig allocated in the latest CentOS 6 images
that I see in AWS, it's possible to get pretty pressed for space
pretty quickly.

Now, AWS published guidelines on manipulating partition size, and
expanding a matching filesystem, but they're very clear to "unmount
the parition before you touch it!!!" That's a bit difficult to unmount
with a "/" partition, and they understandably don't have the kind of
"boot from CD and work from the console" setup I'd normally use for
that kind of work.

So: why did the creators of that CentOS AMI elect to use such a small
/ partition? And how dangerous is it, with the system essentially
idle, to use "parted" to expand the "/dev/xvda1" parition and then use
"resize2fs" to expand the "/" file system while the system is alive?

Note that, because I'm a complete weasel, I know at least one way
around this: add a second disk, copy the OS to *that*, set grub to
boot from the second disk, reboot from that, paritition the first disk
as desired, copy the OS back, reset grub to boot from the first disk,
and pray. I've had good success with the approach in the past, and
have rebuilt rougly 15,000 Linux systems this way. But the work
predates CentOS, and I dont't want to go through that again.

So, has anyone resized "/" successfully and gracefully on AWS CentOS instances?

                             Nico Kadel-Garcia