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How to Reduce Logical Volume Size on Linux

Since I found there's no free space in the main volume group for extending other volumes, so I intend to shrink some non-critical volumes to squeeze some more free space.

[root@test ~]# vgs
  VG           #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize  VFree
  vg_test        1   3   0 wz--n- 79.51g    0

Let's see all the volumes and target non-critical volumes.

[root@test ~]# lvdisplay
...
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Path                 /dev/vg_test/lv_home
  LV Name                lv_home
  VG Name                vg_test
  LV UUID                U9nE09-fTBU-CBx4-hCyd-YHZz-bQHu-LlWtXR
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Creation host, time localhost.localdomain, 2015-07-29 22:47:15 +0800
  LV Status              available
  # open                 1
  LV Size                25.60 GiB
  Current LE             6554
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     auto
  - currently set to     256
  Block device           252:2
...

We should make sure there's 5GB can be squeezed from this volume.

[root@test ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/mapper/vg_test-lv_home
                       26G   45M   24G   1% /home

As you can see above, the volume has more than 5GB free space that can be squeezed. But before we proceed, I must remind you that the resizing a volume is quite an error-prone process, you must do it carefully.

Let's umount the volume first.

[root@test ~]# umount /dev/vg_test/lv_home

Check the consistency of the file system in the volume.

[root@test ~]# e2fsck -f /dev/vg_test/lv_home
e2fsck 1.43-WIP (20-Jun-2013)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/vg_test/lv_home: 26/1679360 files (0.0% non-contiguous), 149434/6711296 blocks

OK, it's passed.

Resize the file system of this volume to 20GB.

[root@test ~]# resize2fs /dev/vg_test/lv_home 20G
resize2fs 1.43-WIP (20-Jun-2013)
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/vg_test/lv_home to 5242880 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/vg_test/lv_home is now 5242880 blocks long.

Resize the partition of this volume to 20GB.

[root@test ~]# lvreduce -L 20G /dev/vg_test/lv_home
  WARNING: Reducing active logical volume to 20.00 GiB
  THIS MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA (filesystem etc.)
Do you really want to reduce lv_home? [y/n]: y
  Size of logical volume vg_test/lv_home changed from 25.60 GiB (6554 extents) to 20.00 GiB (5120 extents).
  Logical volume lv_home successfully resized

Remount the volume.

[root@test ~]# mount /dev/vg_test/lv_home

Let's check the result.

[root@test ~]# vgs
  VG           #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize  VFree
  vg_test        1   3   0 wz--n- 79.51g 5.60g
[root@test ~]# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/mapper/vg_test-lv_home
                       20G   44M   19G   1% /home

Now, we have 5.6GB free space.

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