This guide will cover a standard Ubuntu 22.04 installation. If you are not using a standard Ubuntu 22.04 installation then we recommend looking for guides for your specific OS or filesystem you used.

What is LVM?

LVM, or Logical Volume Management is the default method which Ubuntu will use to manage disk mounts. It is an additional layer which sits atop of standard disk partitioning, but below the filesystem. This allows for more flexibility with managing mounts, but also adds some additional complexity.

LVM uses 3 distinct layers, Physical Volumes, Volume Groups and Logical Volumes.

• Physical Volumes - These are the sections of the disk partitions which you want to add to LVM.

• Volume Groups - These are groups which hold the Physical Volumes, and make the space available to Logical Volumes.

• Logical Volumes - These are the disk mounts which will hold the filesystem, and will be mounted to your OS.

This method allows your OS to separate the disk mounts from the physical disk, meaning that you can have a logical volume that spans multiple physical volumes within the volume group.

With the example diagram above, the logical volume spans both physical volumes within the volume group, meaning if you have 2 x 50GB disks, the logical volume can be up to 100GB in size. The filesystem is then placed on top of the logical volume and mounted to the OS.

Do I have unused space available?

By default, Ubuntu does not allocate the full disk space on installation, so if you have installed Ubuntu from an ISO and did not allocate the full disk to the root partition, you may have some unallocated space on your disk which you can assign to grow your root partition quickly and easily.

You can check if you have any unallocated space by running the command vgdisplay, then checking for the Free PE / Size. If you have any unallocated space within your volume group, you can follow the Growing the Logical Volume guide to allocate it.

root@deskpro:~# vgdisplay
  --- Volume group ---
  VG Name               ubuntu-vg
  System ID             
  Format                lvm2
  Metadata Areas        1
  Metadata Sequence No  2
  VG Access             read/write
  VG Status             resizable
  MAX LV                0
  Cur LV                1
  Open LV               1
  Max PV                0
  Cur PV                1
  Act PV                1
  VG Size               <98.00 GiB
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              25087
  Alloc PE / Size       12543 / <49.00 GiB
  Free  PE / Size       12544 / 49.00 GiB
  VG UUID               02DpQ3-gT1C-Xvfd-vumL-7rHi-S4P3-ioxBdt
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Increasing disk space on a standard Ubuntu installation.

There are two main ways to increase your disk space on Ubuntu.

1. Expanding your existing disk

This requires you to increase the size of your existing disk within your hypervisor. It will keep all your data on the same virtual disk.

1. Adding an additional disk

This requires you to add an additional disk within your hypervisor. This will span your data across multiple disks.

Both these methods will grow the free space within the Volume Group, and are completed by Growing the Logical Volume to allocate the free space to your filesystem.