How to add extra storage on the fly using LVM. Here are the steps I used to get my 80GB Maxtor(sda) and 60GB Western Digital(sdb) to work together as one logical unit. I am also using ext3 as my filesystem because it supports on-line resizing.

  • Fresh install of Ubuntu Server 8.10
  • Run updates: sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
  • Reboot because of kernel upgrade
  • Figure out what the extra hard drive is (mine is sdb): sudo fdisk -l
  • Partition the hard drive as Linux LVM: sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
  • Initialize partition for use by LVM (on my system sdb1 is swap): sudo pvcreate /dev/sdb2
  • Display attributes of volume groups to find your group name (mine is ubuntu-server): sudo vgdisplay
  • Add my physical volume to my volume group: sudo vgextend ubuntu-server /dev/sdb2
  • Now extend the logical volume root to include the new physical volume: sudo lvextend -L128G /dev/ubuntu-server/root
  • Lastly, resize the filesystem to include the new free space: sudo resize2fs /dev/ubuntu-server/root

Original article posted by Useful Ubuntu