start a 11.04 instance with a larger root filesystem

In order to fit inside the Amazon "Free Tier", Ubuntu made the decision to change its root volume size from 15G to 8G. That decision was made for all refreshed EBS root images. So, our current set of 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04 images have 8G root filesystems.

If you find that space somewhat limiting, it is easy to give yourself a larger root volume at instance creation time. Its easy

Launch the instance with appropriate block-device-mapping arguments


$ ec2-run-instances $AMI --key mykey --block-device-mapping /dev/sda1=:20


That will create you an instance with a 20G root volume. However the filesystem on that volume will still only occupy 8G of the space. Essentially, you'd have 12G of unused volume at the end of the disk.

Resize the root volume

if you've launched an 11.04 based image newer than alpha-2, this step is not necessary. Cloud-init will do it for you. It is just assumed that you want your root filesystem to fill all space on its partition. I honestly cannot think of a reason why you would not want that.

Now, if you are using 10.04 or 10.10 images, you can resize your root volume easily enough after the boot. Just login, and issue:


$ sudo resize2fs /dev/sda1

That operation should take only a few seconds or less, and you'll then have all the space you need.