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

  1. 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
  1. Create a file system on the partition:
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1
  1. Make a directory where you will mount the new file system:
mkdir /newdata
  1. 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
  1. 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 August 1, 2024: Merge pull request #1562 from naltanov/photon-hugo (a784a46)