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On a Windows 10 laptop, I installed Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS (ubuntu-20.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso) on VirtualBox 6.1.28. I alloted 20GB to the virtual disk, but am running out of room. I followed this page to resize the virtual disk to 40GB.

I tried to follow the 3 pages below to extend the partition used by Ubuntu. They all refer to a swap partition.

Is there a dummy's process to extend my Ubuntu partition in the absence of a swap partition?

Here are the 3 pages I tried to follow...

(1) Use gparted in a live running Ubuntu VM

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I can't follow the procedure because I have no line item that corresponds to a swap partition (at least not that I recognize). I assume that sda5 is my main file system since it is 20GB and mostly used. I right-clicked it and chose "Resize/Move".

enter image description here

The new size "19965" seems suspiciously close to the original 20GB size, so I entered 2x that amount (39930). Unfortunately, it is not accepted. If I press Return or Tab, it reverts back to 19965. I can't simply click the "Resize" button because it is grayed out.

(2) Use fdisk -l

The result of df -h is:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev       1.9G    0  1.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs      394M 1.3M  393M   1% /run
/dev/sda5   20G  15G  3.4G  82% /
tmpfs      2.0G 6.2M  2.0G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs      5.0M 4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs      2.0G    0  2.0G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop0 128K 128K     0 100% /snap/bare/5
/dev/loop2  56M  56M     0 100% /snap/core18/2128
/dev/loop3 219M 219M     0 100% /snap/gnome-3-34-1804/72
/dev/loop1  56M  56M     0 100% /snap/core18/2246
/dev/loop4  66M  66M     0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1519
/dev/loop5  51M  51M     0 100% /snap/snap-store/547
/dev/loop6  33M  33M     0 100% /snap/snapd/12704
/dev/loop7  33M  33M     0 100% /snap/snapd/13640
/dev/loop8  66M  66M     0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1515
/dev/sda1  511M 4.0K  511M   1% /boot/efi
User.Name  476G 237G  240G  50% /media/sf_User.Name
tmpfs      394M  48K  394M   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sr0    59M  59M     0 100% /media/lnxadmin/VBox_GAs_6.1.28

I didn't follow the subsequent fdisk -l because it makes reference to a swap partition, which I don't have. Plus, it refers to VM Workstation, which I do not have.

(3) Use fdisk /dev/sda

After launching the fdisk app using fdisk /dev/sda, I entered p to see the partitions:

Device    Boot   Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 *       2048  1050623  1048576  512M  b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2      1052670 41940991 40888322 19.5G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5      1052672 41940991 40888320 19.5G 83 Linux

Again, I have no swap partition. Since the procedure refers to a swap partition, I abandoned this as well.

user2153235
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    You will need to first expand /dev/sda2 to use the 40GB, then expand /dev/sda5 – matigo Nov 08 '21 at 01:31
  • Thanks, will give it a go. I suspect that I have to be very precise. For sda5, can I simply double the 19965 to 39930? I'm not sure if it matters, but the current size of sda2 slightly different from sda5 -- sda2 is 19966 MiB (but can be extended to 40446 MiB). – user2153235 Nov 08 '21 at 01:54
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    The precision is handled by the system. Just have the partitions use the full space, and the software will handle the rest – matigo Nov 08 '21 at 01:56
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    @matigo: It works! Thanks!! There are probably many people like me who move to an Ubuntu VM out of necessity, but without any Linux experience. Your comment can probably save them a ton of time. Would you please post it as an answer? Maybe with a (very brief) explanation of what it means for a partition to be a subordinate of another (e.g., sda2 under sda5)? – user2153235 Nov 08 '21 at 02:14

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