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 expand the root partition or root file system on your Amazon EBS volume, you might receive a "No space left on device" error. To avoid this error, use the tmpfs temporary file system 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 /dev/nvme0n1 root EBS volume block device is 9 GiB, and the nvme0n1p1 root partition is already 8 GiB:

$ lsblk
NAME          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 nvme0n1p1 root partition, then you receive one of the following error messages in the command output:

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

Resolution

Important: 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 in case you encounter issues.

To increase the size of your EBS volume, complete the following steps:

1. Use SSH to connect to your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Linux instance.

2. To confirm that the root partition mounted under / is full, run the following command:

   df -h

   In the following example output, /dev/nvme0n1p1 is full because it uses 100% of its space:

   $ df -h
   Filesystem      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

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

   lsblk

   lsblk -f

   Example output:

   $ lsblk
   NAME          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 -f
   NAME          FSTYPE LABEL           UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
   nvme0n1
   ├─nvme0n1p1   xfs    /               afcf1342-1d40-41bd-bde9-e4ea5d87e3b6 /
   └─nvme0n1p128
   

   Note the file system size and type. In the preceding example output, the root EBS volume has 9 GiB of total space. However, the /dev/nvme0n1p1 root partition is only 8 GiB. The file system type is XFS.

4. To mount the tmpfs temporary file system to the /tmp mount point, run the following command:

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

   Note: The preceding command creates a 10 MB tmpfs mounted to /tmp.

5. To grow the size of the root partition, run the following command:

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

   Note: Replace /dev/nvme0n1 with your root partition.

6. To verify that you expanded the partition from 8 GiB to 9 GiB, run the following command:

   lsblk

   Example output:

   $ lsblk
   NAME          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

7. To expand the file system, run the following commands based on your file system type.
   XFS file system:

   sudo xfs_growfs -d /

   Example output:

   $ 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

   EXT2, EXT3, or EXT4 file system:

   sudo resize2fs /dev/nvme0n1p1

   Note: Replace /dev/nvme0n1 with your root partition.

8. To verify that the operating system can view the additional space, run the following command:

   df -h

   Example output:

   $ df -h
   Filesystem      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

9. To unmount the tmpfs file system, run the following command:

   sudo umount /tmp