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GROWFS(7)		Miscellaneous Information Manual	     GROWFS(7)

NAME
       growfs,	growfs_fstab  -- start up scripts to grow the root file	system
       and add swap

DESCRIPTION
       The growfs script normally runs at the first boot after system  instal-
       lation.	 If the	boot disk is larger than the root file system and boot
       partitions, and the root	file system is in the last  partition,	growfs
       can  expand  the	 root  file system.  It	can also add a swap partition,
       with a default size of 10% of the boot disk.  Swap is limited to	 twice
       the  memory size	up to 4	GB, 8 GB up to 8 GB of memory, and memory size
       over  8	GB.   It  is  also  limited  to	  the	sysctl(8)   value   of
       vm.swap_maxpages	 divided  by 2.	 By default, no	swap partition is cre-
       ated if an existing swap	partition is found or is listed	in /etc/fstab,
       or the disk is under 15 GB.  The	growfs_fstab script adds any new  swap
       partition  to  /etc/fstab  after	the root file system is	made writable,
       and enables its use as a	dump partition if the  dumpdev	variable  from
       rc.conf(5) is set to AUTO.

       The following options in	/etc/rc.conf control the behavior of growfs:

	     growfs_enable     ("NO")  If set to "YES",	the first time the ma-
			       chine boots, the	root file system will be auto-
			       matically expanded, if possible,	to fill	up all
			       available  space	 after	it,  after  optionally
			       adding a	swap device at the end.

	     growfs_swap_size  ("") If set to "0", the addition	of a swap par-
			       tition is disabled.  An empty value ("")	allows
			       the  creation  of a swap	partition with the de-
			       fault size.  If set to another value, the  swap
			       partition  will	be  created with the specified
			       size in bytes, even if another  swap  partition
			       is detected.

       A setting for growfs_swap_size can be set in the	kernel environment, in
       which case it overrides the value from /etc/rc.conf.

       To  expand  the	root  file system without rebooting, run the following
       command:
	     % /etc/rc.d/growfs	onestart
       In addition, if a swap partition	is added, run the command:
	     % /etc/rc.d/growfs_fstab onestart
       Note that if a disk is expanded again, and if the root file system  had
       previously been expanded	and a swap partition added, it is necessary to
       delete  the swap	partition before this procedure	in order to expand the
       root file system	to the new size.  A new	swap partition can be  created
       during the expansion.

IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
       The  growfs  script  only  attempts to expand the root file system, and
       free space must be available immediately	after the root partition.   It
       is  normally used on images that	have a single file system.  The	script
       requires	that awk(1) be present and in the path.	  This	usually	 means
       that /usr must be available prior to running the	script.

FILES
       /etc/fstab
       /etc/rc.conf

EXIT STATUS
       The growfs utility exits	0 on success, and >0 if	an error occurs.

SEE ALSO
       fstab(5), rc.conf(5), growfs(8),	zpool(8)

HISTORY
       The  growfs manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 10.1.	The ability to
       add a swap partition was	added in FreeBSD 13.2.

AUTHORS
       The  man	 page  and   script   were   written   by   John-Mark	Gurney
       <jmg@FreeBSD.org>.  The ability to create a swap	partition was added by
       Michael Karels <karels@FreeBSD.org>.

FreeBSD	14.3		       November	22, 2022		     GROWFS(7)

Want to link to this manual page? Use this URL:
<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=growfs&sektion=7&manpath=FreeBSD+14.3-RELEASE+and+Ports>

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