Hi guys, I have a question. I am not able to resize the root (rppol) partion of my Linux KVM OpenIndiana partition. I want to expand the size of the rpool partition to the maximum disk size (I already grown the underlying QEMU QCow iamge) with the "format" utility, but I am not able to do it. The format utility always sees only the old disk size, and won't let me grow the partion size in the partion

menu of "format". I also already looked into gparted, where the new disk size is shown corrctly. If anyone can give adivce, thank you very much!

What I want to do is just: Grpw the rpool / (root) ZFS volume from 50GB to the new disk size of 80GB.

I cannot find any HOWTO on the Internet which tells me a way to do it correctly.

As alternative, can I use this commando: parted /dev/vda resizepart 0 100% under OpenIndiana to grow the partion? I just found this on the internet. But parted -l prints out MSDOS partition, instead of Solaris parition.

No, this does not work.

I found a HOWTO for Solaris how to expand the partition, but OpenIndianas "format" utility is missing the expand commando.

Shall I delete the partion, and re-create it?

I am not sure how to it correctly.

Kernspin what is the partition type on your disk?

tsoome: I already grown the partition by booting from the LIVE CD install media. My current problem, is to update the bootloader.

tsoome: When I issue bootadm install-bootloader -MfvR /mnt it says: Not a BE: ramdisk:a and won't update the bootloader, right from the installation media.

normally it would get updated automatically after pkg update or zpool attach. if you have just grown the disk, there should be no need to update bootloader.

tsoome: It now says: Booting from Hard Disk… and nothing happens, if I try to boot from physical hard disk.

mkay.

do you have rpool imported?

tsoome: On the live media?

yes

zpool import -R /mnt -f rpool Yes

better import with: zpool import -N rpool, then beadm mount <bename> /mnt

tsoome: I will do! Just a second.

with -N, nothing from rpool will get mounted and beadm mount can do its job

tsoome: I did that!

tsoome: Shall I now run bootadm again?

tsoome: The command I use is: bootadm install-bootloader -MfvR /mnt

tsoome: Right before that, I issue: beadm mount openindiana-2023:01:17 /mnt

tsoome: Is that correct and shall I proceed?

seems so

tsoome: It says: bootadm: No such BE: /devices/ramdisk:a

tsoome: I did it, I think it worked. I also specified -P rpool.

tsoome: I works! I was able to boot in, and extend the ZFS rpool volume to 80GB. God save, my OI installation is safe. Thank you a lot for your help.

I also want to note that, finally, the reboot process of OI inside my Linux KVM works again. Rebooting the instance works again. Thanks a lot!

I think the solution came with the update I did @ 2023:01:17.

:)

tsoome: I think what makes resizing the root partition hard, is that there is no resize commando in "fdisk" and "format". I have found hints on the Web that the newest Oracle Solaris has a resize option in the partition option in "format". What I did is, I deleted the whole partition inside fdisk, and created a new one.

tsoome: From inside the Live Boot media.

Kernspin better is to use GPT, not MBR+VTOC;)

Yeah if you have a GPT table you can just use the "expand" command in format generally and then "zpool online -e $pool $disk" I believe

You may not even need the expand command if you do the second one I don't remember

And I guess with current bits, automatic expansion should work for rpool now: illumos.org/issues/14978

→ BUG 14978: ZFS autoexpand property should work for root pools (Closed) | code.illumos.org/c/illumos-gate/+/2355

tsoome: I tried to install with UEFI and GPT to a Linux KVM virtual machine, but the installation always failed, thus I installed to BIOS again.

BIOS does not exclude GPT, or using GPT does not mean you have to use UEFI.

ah, and since you had to resize solaris2 partition in fdisk, this did break your MBR bootcode and thats why you needed to reinstall boot loader.

tsoome: I did not know how to install to GPT with BIOS. The default install always install to MBR I think.

richlowe: bulk build came back, looks identical to the previous one

Kernspin I believe, the installer is a bit confusing there and probably should reconsider defaults;)

Is that the OpenIndiana installer?

I suspect it could use some tweaking for modern systems