EC2 instance on Amazon and I am greeted with "No space left on the disk"

Here's an even easier method. (My m2.2xlarge instance was created with RedHat Linux 6.2, I discovered it had a paltry 6gb available of it's 850gb):

  1. Via ssh, check space under root: $df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvde1              6G    6G    0G   100% /
none                   17G     0   17G   0% /dev/shm
  1. From aws console, stop the instance
  2. From aws console, detach the volume (though note the mount point under attachment info, eg /dev/sda1)
  3. From aws console, take a snapshot of the volume
  4. From aws console, create a new volume using the snapshot (using all the remaining space for the instance type, eg 825gb in my m2.2xlarge case)
  5. From aws console, attach the new volume to original mount point /dev/sda1
  6. From aws console, restart the instance and ssh back in to the instance
  7. From ssh, run resize2fs on the root Filesystem (see df -h output in step 1) [potentially not needed]

$resize2fs /dev/xvde1

  1. wait for a few minutes, possibly go and watch your buddy who is stopping all the root services etc like a boss : )
  2. observe the new cavernous mount: $df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used   Avail Use%   Mounted on
/dev/xvde1            813G  3.7G    801G   1%     /
none                   17G     0     17G   0%     /dev/shm

Modify volume size. From AWS Console, you can modify the size of a volume.

  1. From AWS console, open 'ELASTIC BLOCK STORE/Volume'
  2. Select your volume and Modify volume(from Actions button)
  3. Change size (e.g. 8 to 20gib)
  4. Click Modify.
  5. Reboot from EC2 Dashboard.
  6. check size is changed by df -h

I got a solution guys yippeeee

Assuming that you are using a linux AMI, in your case you have an easy method for increasing the size of the file system:

1) Stop the instance

2) Detach the root volume

3) Snapshot the volume

4) Create a new volume from the snapshot using the new size

5) Attach the new volume to the instance on the same place where the original one was

6) Start the instance, stop all services except ssh and set the root filesystem read only

7) Enlarge the filesystem (using for example resize2fs) and or the partition if needed

8) Reboot

As an alternative you can also launch a new instance and map the instance storage or you can create a new ami combining the two previous steps.