lvextend

Additional Notes

lvextend increases the size of an existing LVM logical volume. The volume group must have free physical extents available to allocate to the extension. After extending the logical volume, the filesystem on it must also be resized to use the new space.

This is one of LVM's key advantages: you can grow storage without downtime if the filesystem supports online resizing (ext4, XFS, and most modern filesystems do).

Syntax

lvextend [options] logical-volume-path

Parameters

• logical-volume-path: Path to the logical volume to extend (e.g., /dev/vgname/lvname).

Common Options

• -L size, --size size: New total size (e.g., -L 20G) or increment (-L +5G).
• -l extents, --extents extents: Size in physical extents, or +100%FREE to use all free space.
• -r, --resizefs: Resize the filesystem along with the logical volume (calls fsadm).
• --type type: Allocation type (striped, contiguous, etc.).
• -i stripes: Number of stripes for the new extents.
• -n, --noautomatic: Do not use automatic pool metadata balancing.

Examples

lvextend -L +5G /dev/myvg/volume

Add 5 GB to the logical volume.

lvextend -L 20G /dev/myvg/volume

Set the logical volume size to exactly 20 GB.

lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/myvg/volume

Use all remaining free space in the volume group.

lvextend -r -L +5G /dev/myvg/volume

Extend the logical volume and resize the filesystem in one step.

lvextend -L +10G /dev/myvg/volume
resize2fs /dev/myvg/volume

Extend the logical volume, then manually resize an ext4 filesystem.

Practical Notes

• For XFS filesystems, use xfs_growfs /mountpoint after extending the LV (the -r flag handles this).
• You cannot shrink a logical volume with lvextend; use lvreduce for that.
• Check available free space with vgs or vgdisplay before extending.
• Online resizing is supported for ext4 (with resize2fs), XFS (with xfs_growfs), and others. Verify filesystem support before extending.