Allocate more disk space to virtual websites?

[BPR]

SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version	REQUIRED
Webmin version	REQUIRED
Virtualmin version	REQUIRED
Webserver version	REQUIRED
Related packages	SUGGESTED

I just installed Virtualmin Pro on an old Dell Server that has 80GB memory and 8TB RAID 10 disk space.

Virtualmin seem to be limiting the available disk space to 999GB total.

I do not expect to use this server for anything else and would like to make better use of the hardware. Can I expand the disk space available to Virtualmin manage Virtual Websites?

I looked for a way use the Virtualmin UI but haven’t found anything that looks like it can do this yet.

[BPR]

hmm … I expected the OS type, etc to autofill (did last time)
OS is Ubuntu 24.04 Pro, webmin & virtualmin are current as of today, with nothing modified or added yet.

[ID10T]

@BPR

Virtualmin seem to be limiting the available disk space to 999GB total.

Webmin/Virtualmin only sees the space that the system sees.

Is your OS seeing the space properly?
Also, if this isn’t an LVM setup, not sure you can do it from an interface.

root@main:~# df -h
Filesystem             Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev                   7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /dev
tmpfs                  1.6G  1.5M  1.6G   1% /run
/dev/md1               3.9G  3.5G  463M  89% /
/dev/vg00/usr          9.8G  4.0G  5.3G  43% /usr
tmpfs                  7.8G  144K  7.8G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs                  5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none                   7.8G  436K  7.8G   1% /tmp
/dev/mapper/vg00-var   148G   48G   95G  34% /var
/dev/mapper/vg00-home 1008G  437G  531G  46% /home
tmpfs                  1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /run/user/0
tmpfs                  1.6G     0  1.6G   0% /run/user/1029
overlay                148G   48G   95G  34% /var/lib/docker/

[BPR]

Thanks for the reply … here is what I see … only 100 GB allocated from a 7.2 TB drive … must be a way to allocate more of the available space.

[Joe]

@BPR

Virtualmin seem to be limiting the available disk space to 999GB total.

Virtualmin has nothing to do with it.

[BPR]

OK, I believe you.

I just did a fresh install of Ubuntu 24.04.1, then followed that with an immediate install of Virtualmin.

I was expecting to see a lot more disk space within Virtualmin when I got done.

So, now I have to figure out how to make that space available to websites that I migrated with Virtualmin from a 2020 Ubuntu with Virtualmin that I felt a need to replace because of the age of the OS.

After reading your message I did check what Ubuntu shows:

I don’t think that it is showing all of the disk space that I expected it to. I guess that I will have to read up on how to manage disk storage with Ubuntu … do you have any insight into how I can ultimately get Virtualmin to recognize and make it available to websites … a much larger partition, once I figure out how to actually create one.

[Joe]

Virtualmin is not your operating system and has nothing to say about how much of the disk is used.

When you install Ubuntu, you have the opportunity to specify partition sizes. The installer defaults to a rather stupid 100GB, which it splits up. The simplest thing is to tell it to not be stupid during installation.

But, you can also expand it later. / is on a volume, so you can expand the logical volume and then expand the filesystem. There’s tons of documentation out there about LVM and filesystems. This is a pretty good article from Red Hat:

How to resize a logical volume with 5 simple LVM commands

Note that’s a Red Hat system with XFS filesystem. Ubuntu will probably use ext4 as its filesystem, and, so you’d resize it with resize2fs instead of grow_xfs.

Webmin has a Logical Volume Management module in the Hardware category, I’m not sure how easy it is to use as I’ve never used it (I’m more comfortable using the command line tools for volumes and filesystems). And, it also has a Disk and Network Filesystems module in System category, but I don’t think it knows how to resize. Resizing filesystems is a pretty unusual thing on servers. Usually you give it the whole disk at install time and never think about it again.

[shoulders]

Can you post a picture of the 999Gb number in virtialmin?

The disk my be allocated on the disk but there might be a display limit in virtualmin because has not swapped to 1Tb

[Joe]

Webmin/Virtualmin does not have a filesystem size display limit. OP just accepted the defaults when installing Ubuntu, and Ubuntu gave them 100GB, because Ubuntu is stupid.

[BPR]

actually the 999 GB I typed earlier in this thread was wrong … it is 99 (finger check) … so it seems that because I simply accepted all of the defaults when installing Ubuntu 24.04.1 my 8TB RAID drive when the Ubuntu installer indicated it would use the entire 8TB disk it only produced a 100 GB of usable space instead … sigh

and there is an image a bit higher up in the thread that does show the size.

[ID10T]

I hope you haven’t gotten too far. I thought Ubuntu used LVM by default. You can use the logical volumes tab to expand it. Works. I’ve done it.

[BPR]

Thank you, Joe.
This is really helpful.

I did run the lsblk command and it appears to show that there is 7.3TB of unallocated space left … I can probably figure out how to extend the 100GB partition that Virtualmin is using … not going to rush, will do some more reading and maybe a dry run on a different system before I try it on the live webserver though.

[ID10T]

If you have LVM, and it looks like you do, then Webmin handles it painlessly. I’ve used it.

[BPR]

do you know if this tool “LVM volume tab” in the Ubuntu 24.04.1 downloaded installation DVD ISO ?
I would like to find it and see if I can understand how to use it before I try it on the system that I just installed.

[ID10T]

No. That’s a screen shot from Webmin.

[BPR]

it is LVM … but I didn’t know how to alter the default settings when installing so I accepted the defaults

[BPR]

Is this more like you wanted to see?

[ID10T]

And that tab lets you expand a partition. My system was the same. 2TB but little allocated. I just did it as needed until I had a feel for what was needed. /var ended up need way more space that I would have thought because of backups and package management.

[ID10T]

@BPR

it is LVM … but I didn’t know how to alter the default settings when installing so I accepted the defaults

You are over thinking this. The tab I posted lets you allocate. Warning, don’t try and shrink a partition cuz, well, just don’t.

[BPR]

OK, thanks to you as well!

I will look at it for a few days and try it on a test system before extending the partition on the running system.

Have a good night … I am going to do other things for a while now.