How to manage partitions

You can manipulate storage partitions via the MAAS CLI. Note that partitions cannot be managed through the MAAS UI.

List partitions

To view all the partitions on a block device, use the ‘partitions read’ API call:

maas admin partitions read <node-id> 10

Success.
Machine-readable output follows:
[
    {
        "bootable": false,
        "id": 9,
        "resource_uri":
"/MAAS/api/2.0/nodes/4y3h8a/blockdevices/10/partition/9",
        "path": "/dev/disk/by-dname/vda-part1",
        "uuid": "aae082cd-8be0-4a64-ab49-e998abd6ea43",
        "used_for": "LVM volume for vgroot",
        "size": 5360320512,
        "type": "partition",
        "filesystem": {
            "uuid": "a56ebfa6-8ef4-48b5-b6bc-9f9d27065d24",
            "mount_options": null,
            "label": null,
            "fstype": "lvm-pv",
            "mount_point": null
        }
    }
]

To view the metadata for a specific partition on a block device, rather than all partitions, use the singular ‘partition’ API call with an endpoint:

maas admin partition read <node-id> 10 9

Create partition

To create a new partition on a block device, use the ‘create’ API call:

maas admin partitions create <node-id> 10 size=5360320512

In addition to bytes, as shown above, the ‘size’ of a partition can also be defined with a ‘G’ for gigabytes or ‘M’ for megabytes. The output from the previous command will look like this:

Success.
Machine-readable output follows:
{
    "bootable": false,
    "path": "/dev/disk/by-dname/vda-part1",
    "filesystem": null,
    "used_for": "Unused",
    "type": "partition",
    "id": 10,
    "size": 5360320512,
    "resource_uri": "/MAAS/api/2.0/nodes/4y3h8a/blockdevices/10/partition/10",
    "uuid": "3d32adbf-9943-4785-ab38-963758338c6c"
}

Delete partition

Partitions can be deleted from a block device with the ‘delete’ API call. Make sure you double check the partition details as the partition is deleted immediately, with no further confirmation:

maas admin partition delete <node-id> 10 9

Successful output from the ‘delete’ command will look like this:

Success.
Machine-readable output follows:

Format partition

Partitions can be formatted in a similar way to block devices:

maas admin partition format <node-id> 10 9 fstype=ext4

The output from the ‘format’ command will be similar to the following:

Success.
Machine-readable output follows:
{
    "id": 9,
    "used_for": "Unmounted ext4 formatted filesystem",
    "resource_uri": "/MAAS/api/2.0/nodes/4y3h8a/blockdevices/10/partition/9",
    "path": "/dev/disk/by-dname/vda-part1",
    "uuid": "aae082cd-8be0-4a64-ab49-e998abd6ea43",
    "size": 5360320512,
    "bootable": false,
    "type": "partition",
    "filesystem": {
        "uuid": "ea593366-be43-4ea3-b2d5-0adf82085a62",
        "mount_point": null,
        "mount_options": null,
        "fstype": "ext4",
        "label": "
    }
}

You cannot format partitions that are used to make another virtual block device.

Unformat partition

You can also remove the filesystem from a partition with the ‘unformat’ API call:

maas admin partition unformat <node-id> 10 10 fstype=ext4

Success.
Machine-readable output follows:
{
    "bootable": false,
    "path": "/dev/disk/by-dname/vda-part1",
    "filesystem": null,
    "used_for": "Unused",
    "type": "partition",
    "id": 10,
    "size": 5360320512,
    "resource_uri": "/MAAS/api/2.0/nodes/4y3h8a/blockdevices/10/partition/10",
    "uuid": "3d32adbf-9943-4785-ab38-963758338c6c"
}

Mount partition

A formatted partition can be mounted at a given mount point with the ‘mount’ command.

maas admin partition mount <node-id> 10 10 mount_point=/srv

The mount point and the filesystem is visible in the output from the command:

Success.
Machine-readable output follows:
{
    "bootable": false,
    "id": 10,
    "resource_uri": "/MAAS/api/2.0/nodes/4y3h8a/blockdevices/10/partition/10",
    "path": "/dev/disk/by-dname/vda-part1",
    "uuid": "3d32adbf-9943-4785-ab38-963758338c6c",
    "used_for": "ext4 formatted filesystem mounted at /srv",
    "size": 5360320512,
    "type": "partition",
    "filesystem": {
        "uuid": "1949a5fb-f7bd-4ada-8ba5-d06d3f5857a8",
        "mount_options": ",
        "label": ",
        "fstype": "ext4",
        "mount_point": "/srv"
    }
}

Unmount partition

A previous mounted partition can be unmounted with the ‘unmount’ command:

maas admin partition unmount 4y3h8a 10 10

After successfully running this command, the mount point will show as ‘null’ in the output:

Success.
Machine-readable output follows:
{
    "bootable": false,
    "id": 10,
    "resource_uri": "/MAAS/api/2.0/nodes/4y3h8a/blockdevices/10/partition/10",
    "path": "/dev/disk/by-dname/vda-part1",
    "uuid": "3d32adbf-9943-4785-ab38-963758338c6c",
    "used_for": "Unmounted ext4 formatted filesystem",
    "size": 5360320512,
    "type": "partition",
    "filesystem": {
        "uuid": "1949a5fb-f7bd-4ada-8ba5-d06d3f5857a8",
        "mount_options": null,
        "label": ",
        "fstype": "ext4",
        "mount_point": null
    }
    "type": "partition",
    "id": 3,
    "size": 2000003072
}

---

Last updated 6 days ago.