If you have been allocated more space to your VMWare disk but it doesn’t show up when you run df -h, this post will tell you how to extend your last partition over your new blocks. The important thing here is that you can only extend your last partition without the risk of losing data.

Lets check my current disk size and usage with df -h.

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3        49G   35G   12G  76% /
udev            1.5G  4.0K  1.5G   1% /dev
tmpfs           603M  236K  602M   1% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none            1.5G  168K  1.5G   1% /run/shm
cgroup          1.5G     0  1.5G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1       180M  127M   45M  75% /boot

About 54GB in size. Time to open fdisk.

fdisk /dev/sda

Notice the size of /dev/sda. A lot more than the 54GB shown before.

Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 85.9 GB, 85899345920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders, total 167772160 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00058d4a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      391167      194560   83  Linux
/dev/sda2          391168     2344959      976896   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3         2344960   104857599    51256320   83  Linux

My last partition is /dev/sda3 so this is where I can add new blocks without losing any data.
Lets delete /dev/sda3. It’s ok, you don’t delete any data, just the partition from the partition table.

Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1-4): 3

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 85.9 GB, 85899345920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders, total 167772160 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00058d4a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      391167      194560   83  Linux
/dev/sda2          391168     2344959      976896   82  Linux swap / Solaris

And let’s add a new /dev/sda3.

Command (m for help): n
Partition type:
   p   primary (2 primary, 0 extended, 2 free)
   e   extended
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 3): 3
First sector (2344960-167772159, default 2344960): 
Using default value 2344960
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2344960-167772159, default 167772159): 
Using default value 167772159

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 85.9 GB, 85899345920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10443 cylinders, total 167772160 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00058d4a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      391167      194560   83  Linux
/dev/sda2          391168     2344959      976896   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3         2344960   167772159    82713600   83  Linux

And save.

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

The new table will be used when we reboot the next time, so let’s do it by invoking reboot.

Wait, what, you donut see the whole size when running df -h?
Still 49G.

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3        49G   35G   12G  76% /

You have to resize the disk to new the filesystem. That is done by running resize2fs /dev/sda3.

resize2fs 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
Filesystem at /dev/sda3 is mounted on /; on-line resizing required
old_desc_blocks = 4, new_desc_blocks = 5
The filesystem on /dev/sda3 is now 20678400 blocks long.

Let’s try df -h now.

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3        78G   35G   40G  47% /

And that’s how it’s done.