[SUMMARY] Grow slice 7 into empty cylinders?

I got a few responses that said I should be able to do this, which may well
have been correct, but I was hampered by the presence of Solstice DiskSuite
and its eventual disagreement with Solaris about the size of the
filesystems. (Sorry, Jeff!) As a result, I had to break the mirror; adjust
the size of slice 7 with the 'format' command; build a new filesystem on one
of the disks with 'newfs'; copy the data there; rebuild slice 7 on the other
disk the same way; and finally add them to DiskSuite again and sync up the
data. (I haven't yet worked on the second drive, but I will Real Soon.)
   [The most important step that every answer featured was the need for a
backup before I started. May I mention here that my NBU Master Server was on
this partition? Naturally...]
    The SunSolve web site says, in item #16305, "It COULD BE [sic] that the
size of this filesystem in this volume does not match the size of the
filesystem." As vague as that is, it's exactly the case: Solaris knew that
I'd made slice 7 bigger, but DiskSuite refused to believe it. [See the doc
for details on how to check this both for Veritas Volume manager and for
DiskSuite.] I wish it were otherwise, but I guess the presence of a logical
volume manager complicated things; if someone has simple devices mounted,
like /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0, then this might work for them.
   The most complete answer was:
> 
> No problem. First, MAKE A BACKUP. Unmount the filesystem 
> and add the cylinders to slice 7 using format, then use growfs 
> <raw-device> to add the space to the filesystem. Remount, 
> and you're back in business. You should be able to do this 
> while the filesystem is mounted as well, but I tend not to 
> tempt fate.  'man growfs' for more info.
> 
> Easy enough?  :)
>
   One person suggested that I assign the unused cylinders to slice 2, and
while the audacity of the idea appealed to me, the fact that this server had
to match another's configuration held me back:
>
> Normally slice 2 is used to represent the "whole disk".
> This is an old tradition, but is not required. You can
> reassign slice 2 to be any particular cylinders you want.
>
-----Original Question-----
Subject: Grow slice 7 into empty cylinders?
   I need space pretty badly, and I'm hoping that someone can tell me
whether this clever plan will work.
    I have a 420R running Solaris 2.6 and I use Disksuite to mirror the two
internal drives. If I have the disks already partitioned into seven slices,
but apparently left a bunch of cylinders unassigned _after_ slice seven, can
I expand slice seven to include those slices non-destructively? (Sadly, I
can't add an 8th slice to the drive and then use DiskSuite to tack it on to
the metadevice.)
   If not, do I have any alternatives besides using format to make a larger
s7, re-make the filesystem, and then and then restore onto it?
    Thanks for any pointers to stuff I should have seen beforehand.
----------------------------
   Thanks especially to Jeff Horwitz, as well as Darren Dunham and Richard
Markham. To the salesman who sent me the unsolicited quote...feh.
-wde
--
Will Enestvedt
UNIX System Administrator
Johnson & Wales University -- Providence, RI
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