Adding a Disk and Partitioning It

If the df command shows that the file system is indeed nearing capacity, you can add a new disk on the fly and partition it to increase capacity.

  1. Add a new disk.

    For example, you can add a new disk to a virtual machine by using the VMware vSphere Client. After adding a new disk, check for the new disk by using fdisk. In the following example, the new disk is named /dev/sdb:

     fdisk -l
     Device        Start      End  Sectors Size Type
     /dev/sda1      2048 16771071 16769024   8G Linux filesystem
     /dev/sda2  16771072 16777182     6111   3M BIOS boot
    
     Disk /dev/sdb: 1 GiB, 1073741824 bytes, 2097152 sectors
     Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
     Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
     I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    
  2. Partition it with the parted wizard.

    The command to partition the disk on Photon OS is as follows:

    parted /dev/sdb

    Use the parted wizard to create it as follows:

    mklabel gpt mkpart ext3 1 1024

  3. Create a file system on the partition:

    mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1
    
  4. Make a directory where you will mount the new file system:

    mkdir /newdata
    
  5. Open /etc/fstab and add the new file system with the options that you require:

       	#system mnt-pt  type    options dump    fsck
       	/dev/sda1       /       ext4    defaults,barrier,noatime,noacl,data=ord$
       	/dev/cdrom      /mnt/cdrom      iso9660 ro,noauto       0       0
       	/dev/sdb1       /newdata        ext3    defaults        0		0
    
  6. Mount it using the following command:

    `mount /newdata`
    

    Verify the results:

df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/root 7.8G 4.4G 3.1G 59% / devtmpfs 172M 0 172M 0% /dev tmpfs 173M 0 173M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 173M 664K 172M 1% /run tmpfs 173M 0 173M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs 173M 36K 173M 1% /tmp tmpfs 35M 0 35M 0% /run/user/0 /dev/sdb1 945M 1.3M 895M 1% /newdata

Last modified November 8, 2023: Update downloading-photon.md (3799256)