The
resize2fs
program will resize ext2 or ext3 file systems. It can be used to enlarge or
shrink an unmounted file system located on
device.
If the filesystem is mounted, it can be used to expand the size of the
mounted filesystem, assuming the kernel supports on-line resizing. (As
of this writing, the Linux 2.6 kernel supports on-line resize for
filesystems mounted using ext3 only.).
The
size
parameter specifies the requested new size of the filesystem.
If no units are specified, the units of the
size
parameter shall be the filesystem blocksize of the filesystem.
Optionally, the
size
parameter may be suffixed by one of the following the units
designators: 's', 'K', 'M', or 'G',
for 512 byte sectors, kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes, respectively.
The
size
of the filesystem may never be larger than the size of the partition.
If
size
parameter is not specified, it will default to the size of the partition.
The
resize2fs
program does not manipulate the size of partitions. If you wish to enlarge
a filesystem, you must make sure you can expand the size of the
underlying partition first. This can be done using
fdisk(8)
by deleting the partition and recreating it with a larger size or using
lvextend(8),
if you're using the logical volume manager
lvm(8).
When
recreating the partition, make sure you create it with the same starting
disk cylinder as before! Otherwise, the resize operation will
certainly not work, and you may lose your entire filesystem.
After running
fdisk(8),
run resize2fs to resize the ext2 filesystem
to use all of the space in the newly enlarged partition.
If you wish to shrink an ext2 partition, first use
resize2fs
to shrink the size of filesystem. Then you may use
fdisk(8)
to shrink the size of the partition. When shrinking the size of
the partition, make sure you do not make it smaller than the new size
of the ext2 filesystem!