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I've been struggling to extend the sda3 partition shown below to the max available on sda which is 100G. I wasn't aware my distro was Oracle Linux & I was trying all the solutions available for RHEL from other sites.

[root@localname bin]# lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0  100G  0 disk
├─sda2   8:2    0    8G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda3   8:3    0 38.4G  0 part /
└─sda1   8:1    0  200M  0 part /boot/efi

I can't however find anything yet & thought to seek community's help here directly. Can someone help me out here in extending the partition sda3 to the maximum capacity what sda actually holds?

Fdisk Output:

[root@localname bin]# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 107.4 GB, 107374182400 bytes, 209715200 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 1048576 bytes
Disk label type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1    97677311    48838655+  ee  GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.

FDISK done separately on each device gives the relevant info, but fdisk as a whole will only show the first partition details as mentioned above.

[root@localname bin]# fdisk -l /dev/sda2

Disk /dev/sda2: 8589 MB, 8589934592 bytes, 16777216 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 1048576 bytes

[root@localname bin]# fdisk -l /dev/sda3

Disk /dev/sda3: 41.2 GB, 41209036800 bytes, 80486400 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 1048576 bytes
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  • Seems strange to me that sda2 appears before sda3... can you post the output of sudo fdisk -l? Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 0:23
  • @schrodigerscatcuriosity, edited the question. Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 0:27
  • it seems the output is incomplete, could it be? It doesn't show the other partitions Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 0:29
  • That's the full output; nothing left. Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 0:34
  • Mmmh, maybe the vesion of fdisk doesn't suppot GPT... Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 0:39

2 Answers 2

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Whenever fdisk shows you a partition with ee in the Id field, that indicates the actual partitioning type is GPT and this version does not support it. Partition ID code ee is a dummy MBR partition entry that exists in all GPT-partitioned disks. Modifying it has no effect on the real GPT partition table.

In this case, you must use parted or gdisk instead of fdisk.

Running fdisk -l /dev/sda2 and fdisk -l /dev/sda3 will only produce nonsense, because those commands will be reading the first block of the respective partition and interpreting it as the partition table. Any changes applied there will not have any effect on the real partition table.

Remember: any commands that manipulate disk partitions should always be targeted to the device that contains the actual partition table. Almost always this will be the whole-disk device.

Extending the 3rd partition is possible only if that partition is physically located after all the other partitions. Usually it's better to boot the system into rescue mode from the OS installation media or use another live Linux boot media, but it is possible to modify the partition table while the disk is in use. There are just three constraints:

  • you should not change the disk location of the starting point of any of the partitions you wish to keep
  • you should not make any of the partitions smaller than the filesystem is currently sized as
  • to make the changes effective on a disk that is currently in use, you must often use the partprobe command or reboot: if your fdisk does not understand GPT, it indicates this system is probably RHEL/OEL 6.x or older, and that also means the partitioning tools might not be able to make partition changes effective immediately if the disk is in use.

The commands required to extend the third partition using parted would be:

# parted /dev/sda
(parted) print      

<read the output to confirm that the third partition is physically the last one>

(parted) resizepart 3 100%
(parted) quit

After this, check /proc/partitions to see if the kernel has already recognized the new size for the 3rd partition. If not, run partprobe /dev/sda and check again. If it's still not recognized, you may have to reboot.

Once the new partition size is recognized in /proc/partitions, it is time to extend the filesystem inside the partition. That must be done using a filesystem-specific tool, as RHEL/OEL 6.x is probably too old to have a generic fsadm tool. The filesystem type on such a system is probably ext4, and so resize2fs will be the tool to use. So run this command:

resize2fs /dev/sda3

The new size will be visible to commands like df only after the filesystem is successfully resized.

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  • I had tried this already, resize2fs doesn't work here. Got the working solution in the answer I posted below. Commented Jul 30, 2021 at 4:15
  • Hmm... according to the second link you posted in your answer, the messages of oci-growfs look very similar to what xfs_growfs, the extension tool for XFS filesystems, would output. Perhaps it's an XFS filesystem after all? For comparison: thegeekdiary.com/… Commented Jul 30, 2021 at 5:53
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Oracle has a util which I got while searching & that resolved the issue like anything. No umount or check partitions in /proc/partitions for that matter.

Here are the 2 links that helped:

https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Compute/References/ociutilities.htm#OCI_Utilities

https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Compute/References/oci-growfs.htm#ocigrowfs

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