GROWFS(8) Maintenance Commands and Procedures GROWFS(8)

NAME

growfs - non-destructively expand a UFS file system

SYNOPSIS

/usr/sbin/growfs [-M mount-point] [newfs-options]
[raw-device]

DESCRIPTION

growfs non-destructively expands a mounted or unmounted UNIX file
system (UFS) to the size of the file system's slice(s).


Typically, disk space is expanded by first adding a slice to a
metadevice, then running the growfs command. When adding space to a
mirror, you expand each submirror before expanding the file system.


growfs will ``write-lock'' (see lockfs(8)) a mounted file system when
expanding. The length of time the file system is write-locked can be
shortened by expanding the file system in stages. For instance, to
expand a 1 Gbyte file system to 2 Gbytes, the file system can be
grown in 16 Mbyte stages using the -s option to specify the total
size of the new file system at each stage. The argument for -s is the
number of sectors, and must be a multiple of the cylinder size. Note:
The file system cannot be grown if a cylinder size of less than 2 is
specified. Refer to the newfs(8) man page for information on the
options available when growing a file system.


growfs displays the same information as mkfs during the expansion of
the file system.


If growfs is aborted, recover any lost free space by unmounting the
file system and running the fsck command, or run the growfs command
again.


Note: If growfs is aborted and the file system is used before fsck is
run on it, UFS metadata might be left in an incomplete state, with
the result that the file system would be corrupted. In such a
circumstance, you would have to restore the file system from backups.

OPTIONS

Root privileges are required for all of the following options.

-M mount-point
The file system to be expanded is mounted on mount-
point. File system locking (lockfs) will be used.


newfs-options
The options are documented in the newfs man page.


raw-device
Specifies the name of a raw metadevice or raw
special device, residing in /dev/md/rdsk, or
/dev/rdsk, respectively, including the disk slice,
where you want the file system to be grown.

EXIT STATUS

The following exit values are returned:

0
Successful completion.


>0
An error occurred.

SEE ALSO

attributes(7), fsck(8), lockfs(8), mkfs(8), newfs(8)

LIMITATIONS

Only UFS file systems (either mounted or unmounted) can be expanded
using the growfs command. Once a file system is expanded, it cannot
be decreased in size. The following conditions prevent you from
expanding file systems: When acct is activated and the accounting
file is on the target device. When C2 security is activated and the
logging file is on the target file system. When there is a local
swap file in the target file system. When the file system is root
(/), /usr, or swap.

April 20, 2009 GROWFS(8)