VMware Communities: Message List - Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

Re: Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

derekn — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:19:47 GMT

added "yum clean all" to my patchscript.

I was thinking of splitting the log volume seperate but I also agree that can get kind of crazy to manage. Well not too crazy but just crazy enough

Re: Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

ewannema — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:03:26 GMT

Oh yeah, this is why I like to split off /var as a separate partition and not just /var/log. Filling up the / partition is a bad thing.

Some people like to keep /var/log separate so the logging volume can not have its space exhausted by a non logging process, but I don't want to go too crazy with filesystems.

Re: Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

ewannema — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:57:42 GMT

This is one of the downsides of running from a web repository. In my patching/upgrade scripts I run 'yum clean all' at the beginning and end to clean up these files.

Re: Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

derekn — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:44:17 GMT

Well after doing a "find -name '*' -size +1000k" I found a majority of my files that were larger were located in the ./cache/yum/update/packages/ directory. So I ran the "yum clean all" command and my root partition went from 86% to 66%. I never even began to think that the .rpms would still be there after the ftp patching process.

A bit of searching showed that these are files downloaded by yum from the depot, and that the way
to clean them out is by using 'yum clean all' command. It is probably a good idea to include doing this as part of the patching process.

It seems to allow me to get about 20% back of storage space.

Thanks again for the help.

go easy...

Re: Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

dominic7 — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:36:04 GMT

There really isn't an easy way to expand the / partition shy of re-installing the system. If you have a / partition that is that full there must be some kruft that you can delete to make some room to install patches. I'd suggest running a find command for files larger than 10MiB and see what you have that you can delete. Perhaps your yum cache is getting large, or you have some extra large log files laying around that you could archive or delete.

Re: Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

derekn — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:19:28 GMT

I apologize I currently do run my backups from my IIS server so the patches are never placed in the updates directory. My question is since applying 30+ updates since 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 and so on it has created a large root partition. Is there a way to expand that partition so I can still apply patches (which update files in esx) that expand the esx volumes? These volumes are going to grow over time. I know with 3.5 coming out eventually I will blow away the partitions and start from scratch but in the mean time there were more patches released Jan 2nd and I want to apply them but I get errors because of the root partition being close to full. I hope that makes sense.

go easy...

Re: Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

depping — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:10:57 GMT

just clean the update directory and run the updates from a vmfs volume where you can also store them. I use the http://www.vmprofessional.com/ script which is awesome.

Duncan
My virtualisation blog:
http://www.yellow-bricks.com

Extend ESX ROOT Partition for more patching.

derekn — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:59:49 GMT

I am sure several people have ran into this but ever since I have upgraded from 3.0.1 to 3.0.2 with all the patches that are coming out I have filled my esx partition. Is there a way to extend the ESX partition. I never thought I would have to extend it larger than the 5gigs that I have originally planned for quite sometime. Anyone have ideas for a way around this?

I copy my patches then patch so I know there are no extra files just taking up space but when I run "vdf -h" my main partition is almost 90% full.

Re: Extend ESX Partition for more patching.

derekn — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:07:28 GMT

Sure I should of clarified I am talking about my root partition

~~root@esx1 root~~# vdf -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 4.9G 3.9G 685M 86% /
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 99M 32M 63M 34% /boot
none 391M 0 391M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 2.0G 66M 1.8G 4% /var/log
/vmfs/devices 3.4T 0 3.4T 0% /vmfs/devices
/vmfs/volumes/4495f603-a01e71a3-794d-0017a4499244
129G 628M 128G 0% /vmfs/volumes/storage1
/vmfs/volumes/4570a7b5-1c8dc72f-3bac-0017a44950fc
1.6T 949G 657G 59% /vmfs/volumes/Green
/vmfs/volumes/4571b5a6-c5cafec2-0976-0017a4499244
1.6T 857G 749G 53% /vmfs/volumes/Gold

~~root@esx1 root~~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1725.7 GB, 1725771546624 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 209813 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 209813 1685322858+ fb Unknown

Disk /dev/sdb: 1725.7 GB, 1725771546624 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 209813 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 209813 1685322858+ fb Unknown

Disk /dev/cciss/c0d0: 146.7 GB, 146778685440 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 17844 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 14 650 5116702+ 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p3 651 17508 135411885 fb Unknown
/dev/cciss/c0d0p4 17509 17844 2698920 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5 17509 17577 554211 82 Linux swap
/dev/cciss/c0d0p6 17578 17831 2040223+ 83 Linux
/dev/cciss/c0d0p7 17832 17844 104391 fc Unknown

go easy...

Re: Extend ESX Partition for more patching.

Dave.Mishchenko — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:04:14 GMT

Would you be able to post the results of vdf -h and fdisk -l?