This is not really a problem at all. when you launch your image for the first time, you can specify a larger / volume size and cloud-init-tools will take care of the rest. This is well documented in the AWS userguides. -- Kelly Prescott On Wed, 29 Apr 2015, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote: > 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 > _______________________________________________ > CentOS-virt mailing list > CentOS-virt at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-virt >