loewc wrote:
[color=blue]
Hi,
this is more a general question … about a point that drives me crazy
these days its quite easy to extend a disk (vmware, whaever) - And it
really complicated to extend the filesystem.[/color]
That is not exactly true. A physical disk can’t be extended! 
Yes, it is relatively easy to extend a virtual disk because, in
reality, that virtual disk is often just a file and increasing the size
of the file increases the size of the disk making additional free space
available on the disk.
[color=blue]
This is perhaps a question to SUSE itself:
why it is required to partition the disk? why the installer requires
that? grub2 can boot from ext4,btrfs,…[/color]
The answer to your question about partitions has already been explained
here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning
[color=blue]
the problem is that resizing a partition never(?) works without a
reboot[/color]
Before a partition can be used, it has to be formated… for a specific
filesystem. For performance reasons, many operating systems keep copies
of data in memory including frequently accessed parts of the filesystem
itself. If you were to change parts of the filesystem on the disk and
the system were to rewrite the data it has cached in memory, the disk
would become corrupted. For this reason, changes to most filesystems
cannot be done while the disk is being used.
[color=blue]
For additional disks you can use lvm or mkfs on the whole disk … but
not with Yast. Why?\[/color]
It depends what you are trying to do. YaST Partitioner works. You can
increase the size of a partition or an LV very easily.
[color=blue]
I dont want to say that, but under windows this is simple … extend
(vmware)disk → disk-manager → extend … thats all
or ZFS …[/color]
The first step is easy. You are adding free space to the virtual disk
but that doesn’t increase the size of any partitions.
[color=blue]
What do you think?[/color]
It is relatively easy to increase the capacity of a virtual disk. Since
disks use a standard partitioning scheme, many generic tools will allow
you to increase the size of a partition as long as there is free space
on the disk and there isn’t another partition adjacent to it. With LVM,
space from multiple disks can be used to create or increase the size of
a logical volume.
A filesystem is installed into a partition or a logical volume. To
increase the capacity of the filesystem, you need free space in the
partition or the LV. Since each filesystem is different you need to use
different tools for different filesystems. The changes you can make
depend on the specific filesystem. Most (I hesitate to say all) Linux
filesystems can be expanded easily with tools included with the OS but
not while the filesystem is mounted and in use.
The ability to expand the C: drive on a Windows server while it is
being used is a nice feature but it only works on a Windows server, not
a Windows Workstation. There are other “features” of a Windows
filesystem that aren’t so nice so it’s up to you to select a filesystem
(and OS) that provides the features you need.
[color=blue]
Perhaps it is possible to address this in future versions …[/color]
[color=blue]
Chris[/color]
Perhaps…
–
Kevin Boyle - Knowledge Partner
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