How do I increase the size of my EBS volume if I receive an error that there's no space left on my file system?

Short description

When you try to expand the root partition or root file system on your EBS volume, you might receive a No space left on device error. To avoid this error, use the temporary file system (tmpfs) that's in your virtual memory. Mount the tmpfs file system under the /tmp mount point, and then expand your root partition or root file system.

The following example shows that the root EBS volume block device (/dev/nvme0n1) is 9 GiB, and the root partition (partition 1) is already 8 GiB:

$ lsblkNAME          MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1       259:0    0   9G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1   259:1    0   8G  0 part /
└─nvme0n1p128 259:2    0   1M  0 part

If you try to increase the root partition (partition 1), then you receive one of the following error outputs:

$ sudo growpart /dev/nvme0n1 1/bin/growpart: line 248: /tmp/growpart.fklt5u/dump.out: No space left on device
FAILED: failed to dump sfdisk info for /dev/nvme0n1

-or-

$ sudo growpart /dev/nvme0n1 1CHANGED: partition=1 start=4096 old: size=16773087 end=16777183 new: size=18870239 end=18874335
FAILED: failed: sfdisk --list /dev/nvme0n1

Note: Before you proceed, it's a best practice to create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) backup of the instance. Or, create a snapshot of the root EBS volume that's attached to your instance. A backup allows you to recover your data from unforeseen issues.

Resolution

1. Connect to your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Linux instance with SSH.

2. Use the df -h command to verify that the root partition mounted under / is full (100%). In the following example, /dev/nvme0n1p1 uses 100% of its space:

   $ df -hFilesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
   devtmpfs        460M     0  475M   0% /dev
   tmpfs           478M     0  492M   0% /dev/shm
   tmpfs           478M  432K  492M   1% /run
   tmpfs           478M     0  492M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
   /dev/nvme0n1p1  8.0G  8.0G  664K 100% /
   tmpfs            96M     0   99M   0% /run/user/1000

   To gather details about your attached block devices and the root / mount point, run the following commands:

   $ lsblkNAME          MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
   nvme0n1       259:0    0   9G  0 disk
   ├─nvme0n1p1   259:1    0   8G  0 part /
   └─nvme0n1p128 259:2    0   1M  0 part
   
   $ lsblk -fNAME          FSTYPE LABEL           UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
   nvme0n1
   ├─nvme0n1p1   xfs    /               afcf1342-1d40-41bd-bde9-e4ea5d87e3b6 /
   └─nvme0n1p128

   In this example output, the root EBS volume has 9 GiB of total space. However, the root partition (/dev/nvme0n1p1) or partition 1 is only 8 GiB. The file system type is XFS.

3. To avoid a No space left on the block device error, mount the temporary file system tmpfs to the /tmp mount point. This creates a 10 M tmpfs mounted to /tmp:

   $ sudo mount -o size=10M,rw,nodev,nosuid -t tmpfs tmpfs /tmp

4. To grow the size of the root partition or partition 1, run the growpart command. Replace /dev/nvme0n1 with your root partition:

   $ sudo growpart /dev/nvme0n1 1 CHANGED: partition=1 start=4096 old: size=16773087 end=16777183 new: size=18870239 end=18874335

5. To verify that you expanded partition 1 Gib to 9 GiB, run the lsblk command:

   $ lsblkNAME          MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
   nvme0n1       259:0    0   9G  0 disk
   ├─nvme0n1p1   259:1    0   9G  0 part /
   └─nvme0n1p128 259:2    0   1M  0 part

6. Expand the file system. Refer to Step 3 to verify the file system of your root partition /. In the following example, an XFS-type file system is expanded:

   $ sudo xfs_growfs -d /data blocks changed from 2096635 to 2358779
            =                       sectsz=512   sunit=0 blks, lazy-count=1
   log      =internal               bsize=4096   blocks=2560, version=2
   naming   =version 2              bsize=4096   ascii-ci=0 ftype=1
            =                       sunit=0      swidth=0 blks
   data     =                       bsize=4096   blocks=2096635, imaxpct=25
            =                       crc=1        finobt=1 spinodes=0
            =                       sectsz=512   attr=2, projid32bit=1
   realtime =none                   extsz=4096   blocks=0, rtextents=0
   meta-data=/dev/nvme0n1p1         isize=512    agcount=4, agsize=524159 blks

   In the following example, an EXT2/EXT3/EXT4 file system on partition 1 is expanded:

   $ sudo resize2fs /dev/nvme0n1p1

7. After you expand the file system, use the df -h command to verify that the OS can see the additional space:

   $ df -hFilesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
   devtmpfs        960M     0  960M   0% /dev
   tmpfs           978M     0  978M   0% /dev/shm
   tmpfs           978M  392K  978M   1% /run
   tmpfs           978M     0  978M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
   /dev/nvme0n1p1  9.0G  8.0G 1022M  89% /
   tmpfs           196M     0  196M   0% /run/user/1000
   tmpfs            10M     0   10M   0% /tmp

8. To unmount the tmpfs file system, run the unmount command:

   $ sudo umount /tmp