GROWFS(8)               FreeBSD System Manager's Manual              GROWFS(8)

NAME

     growfs - expand an existing UFS file system

SYNOPSIS

     growfs [-Ny] [-s size] special | filesystem

DESCRIPTION

     The growfs utility makes it possible to expand an UFS file system.
     Before running growfs the partition or slice containing the file system
     must be extended using gpart(8).  The growfs utility extends the size of
     the file system on the specified special file.  The following options are
     available:

     -N       "Test mode".  Causes the new file system parameters to be
              printed out without actually enlarging the file system.

     -s size  Determines the size of the file system after enlarging in
              sectors.  Size is the number of 512 byte sectors unless suffixed
              with a b, k, m, g, or t which denotes byte, kilobyte, megabyte,
              gigabyte and terabyte respectively.  This value defaults to the
              size of the raw partition specified in special (in other words,
              growfs will enlarge the file system to the size of the entire
              partition).

     -y       Causes growfs to assume yes as the answer to all operator
              questions.

EXIT STATUS

     Exit status is 0 on success, and >= 1 on errors.  Errors recoverable by
     user action are indicated by 2.  OS errors, which are usually not
     recoverable, are indicated by 3 or greater.

EXAMPLES

     Expand root file system to fill up available space:
           growfs /

     Refresh the LUN size, resize the partition to use all available capacity,
     and expand the filesystem accordingly:
           camcontrol reprobe da0
           gpart recover da0
           gpart resize -i 1 da0
           growfs /dev/da0p1

SEE ALSO

     growfs(7), camcontrol(8), fsck(8), gpart(8), newfs(8), tunefs(8)

HISTORY

     The growfs utility first appeared in FreeBSD 4.4.  The ability to resize
     mounted file systems was added in FreeBSD 10.0.

AUTHORS

     Christoph Herrmann <chm@FreeBSD.org>
     Thomas-Henning von Kamptz <tomsoft@FreeBSD.org>
     The GROWFS team <growfs@Tomsoft.COM>
     Edward Tomasz Napierala <trasz@FreeBSD.org>

CAVEATS

     When expanding a file system mounted read-write, any writes to that file
     system will be temporarily suspended until the expansion is finished.

BUGS

     Normally growfs writes cylinder group summary to disk and reads it again
     later for doing more updates.  This read operation will provide
     unexpected data when using -N.  Therefore, this part cannot really be
     simulated and will be skipped in test mode.

FreeBSD 15.1-STABLE-HBSD       January 23, 2025                      GROWFS(8)