How to extend the root partition in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I have the following situation:

Where I would like to extend the size of nvme0n1 from 8GB to 78 GB using the command line.

Adding also fdisk as requested in comments:

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

This looks like an AWS EC2 instance you are adding a new volume to. You started correctly by listing the available devices.

Then, you need to create a file system on the new device (use sudo file -s to check if there is a file system already) with:

sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p1

Then, make a directory on where you want to mount it:

sudo mkdir /mydata

And mount it:

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mydata

Finally, add it to fstab for auto mounting by editing fstab (back it up first) using:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

with the info from:

sudo lsblk -o +UUID

Test by unmounting the file system and then mounting it again with the next commands:

sudo umount /mydata
sudo mount -a

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, you cannot extend your root partition since it’s filling all of the available space on the device nvme0n1. If you want to utilize the space of the device nvme1n1, you can:

• Use LVM for your root partition. A logical volume can spread across multiple disks using LVM. However, this would need reinstalling your system or backing it up, preparing LVM volumes and restoring current data.
• Use nvme1n1 for a partition below your root, e.g. a separate /home or /var partition.

See also

• https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/452135/54675 for NVMe device naming
• How to create a separate home partition after installing Ubuntu under single / partition