Before growing an ext4 file system, ensure that the underlying block device is of an appropriate size to hold the file system later. Use the appropriate resizing methods for the affected block device.

An ext4 file system may be grown while mounted using the resize2fs command, as in:

resize2fs /mount/point size

The resize2fs command can also decrease the size of an unmounted ext4 file system, as in:

resize2fs /dev/device size

When resizing an ext4 file system, the resize2fs utility reads the size in units of file system block size, unless a suffix indicating a specific unit is used. The following suffixes indicate specific units:

For more information about resizing an ext4 file system, refer to man resize2fs.