Resize partition without using LVM

Question

I have Ubuntu 16.04 installed on remote server and I have requested another 20GB for my /dev/vda2 partition (now its 20GB), so the total size would be 40GB. Since vda2 is full of very valuable data (disk usage is 100%), I want to extend it.

Now, I have searched for ways to do it but I found out my LVM is not configured, or at least it looks like it, because when I run for example vgdisplay nothing happens. Then I tried vgscan and it says Reading volume groups from cache. but that's it.

I have tried to follow this tutorial https://www.linuxtechi.com/extend-lvm-partitions/ but since I can't run

# vgdisplay < Volume-Group-Name>

because I don't know my volume-group-name, I am stuck.

What can I do ? I am looking for the safest way and also easiest since I have 2 databases running there, I backed up all my data from them but I really don't want to set it all up once again...

Just for info, when I run fdisk -l I get this:

Edit:

this is what I got regarding to answer below:

label: gpt
label-id: 88501878-0C4F-486D-B09A-1AD0A6C81982
device: /dev/vda
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 41943006

/dev/vda1 : start=        2048, size=        2048, type=21686148-6449-6E6F-744E-656564454649, uuid=6FA9DDEF-760F-4276-9DF0-B8A62F9C51BD
/dev/vda2 : start=        4096, type=0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4, uuid=E0912389-7C07-41F7-A21E-B8B131F2C491

Answer 1

You can simply use sfdisk to resize the 2nd partition.

# write the current partition table into a machine readable text file 
sfdisk --dump /dev/vda > /var/tmp/vda.old
cp /var/tmp/vda.old /var/tmp/vda.new
# also copy vda.old to another machine to have a safe backup

# edit the dump to set the new size for partion 2
# (you may remove the size parameter ", size= 1234" and the
# whole line "last-lba: 1234" to get the max possible size)
vim /var/tmp/vda.new

# now apply the edited partition table to the harddisk
sfdisk --no-reread /dev/vda </var/tmp/vda.new

# check if it looks good, otherwise repair/try again
fdisk -l /dev/vda


# after reboot, resize the filesystem too, for example in case of ext{2,3,4}
resize2fs /dev/vda2

Note, you can do this without using LVM because there is free space on your HD directly after the partition you want to resize. With LVM you would not have to reboot and also the whole resizing steps would look a bit less dangerous. So in general I would recommend to use LVM from the beginning, when installing the server. But for you it should work here also without LVM.