The Smoothwall was installed as a virtual machine with too little hard drive space. This becomes apparent only once the system has been in production for a while and the amount of logging becomes an issue. You can increase the disk space after the installation. You don't need to reinstall but the Smoothwall system needs to be taken offline while doing this.
If you have any doubts about this process, please contact Smoothwall support so they can assist you.
Before performing this procedure, it's a good idea to take a backup of the web filter logs as well as the system configuration.
NOTE: Take a snapshot of your VM prior to undertaking any work of this nature.
Procedure
- Power off the Smoothwall system.
- Use the VM host tools to increase the disk to the appropriate size. The process of doing this varies from VMWare, HyperV and other virtualization systems so follow the manual for your specific platform.
- Download the GParted ISO. This is a boot ISO that runs a self-contained Linux system with a GUI for the parted application. Parted is an application that allows you to manipulate and copy partitions.
- Once the disk has been resized, adjust the partitions sizes on the Smoothwall to take advantage of the new space. That is what GParted is for.
- Use the GParted ISO to start the Smoothwall.
- There's a few questions at startup regarding keymap and x-server settings. Accept the default.
- Once done, the GParted application opens automatically and you can start resizing the partitions. The partition that generally needs to be resized is /dev/sda4. That's the partition where the logs are stored. Select that partition in the GParted overview and select "Resize/Move" in the menu and expand to fill all available space.
- Select "Apply" and wait until the process completes.
- Once done, reboot and the Smoothwall system should see the new space on the log partition.
If the space is needed on any other partition, then it may be needed to both move and resize partitions until the appropriate sizes are achieved. On a standard Smoothwall systems, the partitions are:
- /dev/sda1 - BIOS and GRUB Bootloader - Leave this one alone.
- /dev/sda2 - Swap - can be changed.
- /dev/sda3 - System - can be changed.
- /dev/sda4 - Log partition - can be changed.
Gparted GUI with a Virtual Smoothwall disk
