Adding a FileSystem/Mount Point to Ubuntu DB2 Sandbox Servers on VMs

I blogged a little while ago on how to create a basic sandbox VM for DB2. Since I’m a big fan of separating filesystems properly, I needed to learn how to add another disk and another filesystem to my sandbox VMs.

Creating a Filesystem

In production environments, we often work with System Administrators (SA) and Storage Admins to get the filesystems we need. That means that I don’t spend much time on things like creating filesystems. I am very clear with clients that I am a database expert, and there are certain tasks that I will hand off to SAs and other experts. I’m sure this gets much more complicated in other kinds of environments, but I thought I’d share how I added a filesystem on my little Ubuntu VM running on VMware Workstation 12 Player (not the fully featured VMware Workstation Pro).

I started with this article, and for the most part followed it very closely, even though that is for a more advanced implementation of VMware. The steps aren’t rocket science:

1. Log on to your Linux VM
2. Run this command and note the sdx entries:

   ecrooks@ubuntu:~$ ls /dev/sd*
   /dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2  /dev/sda5

3. Shut down the Linux VM
4. Go into the VMware Workstation Player, right click on the VM, then select “Settings:
   
5. On the hardware tab, select “Add”, and a Wizard will pop up:
   
6. In the Add Hardware Wizard, select “Hard Disk” and click next:
   
7. Select SCSI and click next:
   
8. Select “Create a new virtual disk” and click next:
   
9. Select a size that makes sense both for your host and your VM and click next:
   
10. Take the default and click Finish:
    
11. Now boot up your linux VM, and check the listed disks again:

    ecrooks@ubuntu:~$ ls /dev/sd*
    /dev/sda  /dev/sda1  /dev/sda2  /dev/sda5  /dev/sdb

12. Acting as root, make the file system:

    ecrooks@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb
    [sudo] password for ecrooks: 
    mke2fs 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
    Creating filesystem with 1310720 4k blocks and 327680 inodes
    Filesystem UUID: c8fd701b-e492-4de4-a16f-c69d65466d02
    Superblock backups stored on blocks: 
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736
    
    Allocating group tables: done                            
    Writing inode tables: done                            
    Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
    Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done 

13. As root, use fdisk to verify your new disk is there (at the bottom):

    ecrooks@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
     
    ... 
    
    Disk /dev/ram15: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
    Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
    I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
    
    
    Disk /dev/sda: 20 GiB, 21474836480 bytes, 41943040 sectors
    Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    Disklabel type: dos
    Disk identifier: 0x3101965c
    
    Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
    /dev/sda1  *        2048 39845887 39843840   19G 83 Linux
    /dev/sda2       39847934 41940991  2093058 1022M  5 Extended
    /dev/sda5       39847936 41940991  2093056 1022M 82 Linux swap / Solaris
    
    
    Disk /dev/sdb: 5 GiB, 5368709120 bytes, 10485760 sectors
    Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
    Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
    I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

14. Make a directory that your new file system will be mounted on:

    ecrooks@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /db2home2

15. Make a backup of /etc/fstab (in case you mess up):

    ecrooks@ubuntu:~$ sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

16. Edit /etc/fstab using your favorite editor to add this line:

    /dev/sdb /New_Directory_Name ext3 defaults 1 3

17. Restart the Linux VM

Obviously this procedure wouldn’t work so well for a production environment. I’m sure there are online ways to do much of this, but this is just my little sandbox.