How to expand ext4 partition size using command-line?

I know this is very old issue, but many people are looking for that resolve.

For this example you have the following typical situation. On the beginning is a single partition, and on the end a swap partition is located. it isn't good because swap can be heavily loaded, and end of rotated disk is the slowest part of it. what I suggest?

1. Create boot partition at the begin. Why at the beginning? because many tools have got problems with end of large disk above 2TB barrier. After boot partition should be swap partition. This is for performance. Rest of disk should be used for other partitions.

But what with this situation? I don't recommend expanding sda1. I suggest creating other partitions after sda1 & sda2, mounted as /home and /usr. On that directories are stored the most user and system data, and it is possible to securely move data from that directories to new partitions.

2. But. (second "but") if you still want keep your current structure, you should first remove swap partition. You should do swapoff, remark this in /etc/fstab. if swapon tells you (see man) no swap is used, you can remove it by partition tool (fdisk or similar).

   When you don't have this partition, you can enlarge your sda1. Using fdisk you should firstly print partition. It is for remembering where it starts. Secondly remove partition using 'd' key. Don't panic, nothing is written to hard drive :). After print you see, no partition exist on the disk.

   Next create new partition, but be careful. See on what sector original partition started. Write the same number. After that look at the end. fdisk prompts you for last available sector. Use calculator and assign in your mind how much swap do you need in kilobytes. Multiple it by 2, and subtract this number from last sector number prompted by fdisk. Create partition. Print this (it is still in fdisk temporary memory), and look all is ok.

   After this press 'w' key, this will tru write new partitioning to the drive. You will see information all is synced, or sync is failed. If failed, you can call command partx /dev/sda for doing sync. If it still fails, you should reboot your system. After reboot you have prepared larger partition, but filesystem on it is still smaller. You should grow it. EXT4 is growable on the fly :), use resize2fs /dev/sda1 for do it.

   You don't need remounting rebooting etc. Last, you should restore swap partition. Simply use fdisk again, create new partition as swap. After writing 'w', device sda2 will be restored. Prepare swap structure on it using mkswap /dev/sda2, remove remarks for swap on /etc/fstab and finally do swapon -a. Look using swapon or top command, swap is activated.

I know, it's very long explanation. I hope it will be usable for any. Notice, in my opinion xfs filesystem is much better, unfortunately this fs doesn't support shrinking without temporary copying to alternate place, but shrink is used rarely. It is nice, xfs takes extremely little place for his own metadata, and is faster in many ways in comparison to ext4.

Another hint, better use some LVM as middle layer for partitioning. after that any resizing is much easier. Performance is comparable, of course, you can use mix of HDD management. you can use in common raw partitions and LVM.

You can't do it safely while the partition is mounted, meaning you need to boot some other partition and do it from there.

gparted is a nice, easy GUI for this purpose. In our deleted comment exchange you mentioned it would not start because of "can't access display" -- this implies you aren't in X; since it is a GUI it won't work without that.

Of course, if you don't have another partition to use, you'll need a live CD or something -- I think they usually come with gparted. Your best bet is probably the actual gparted live CD, which looks to have a reasonably recent latest stable version (and will fit on a CD, which is nice since the "live CD" is rapidly becoming the "live DVD").

I've never had gparted cause a problem but of course do back your important tish up first.