resize2fs on LVM2 on hardware RAID5

["Pim Bliek" <pim.bliek@gmail.com>]

Hi

Since a couple of months I am running Etch on a new production server,
with the following specs:

- kernel 2.6.18-smp package
- lvm 2.02.06-3
- RAID5 on a 3Ware card (3w_9xxx)

I want to grow my /var filesystem ONLINE. I can find tons of docs on
offline resizing, but I am not in the position to go into single user
and umount it. This is production.

I took ext3 as the fs, since this is supposed to be able to resize
online. So I went (/var is now 4 GB):

# lvextend -L 6G /dev/vg00/var
# resize2fs -p /dev/vg00/var
resize2fs 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
Filesystem at /dev/vg00/var is mounted on /var; on-line resizing required
old desc_blocks = 1, new_desc_blocks = 1
resize2fs: Kernel does not support online resizing

I did fed this error to Google and it came up with nothing. Tried lots
of other combinations in Google to find a solution but cannot find it.

I prefer not to build a custom kernel, and use modules of the standard
kernel-image package I am using instead (saves me a reboot) but if
there is no alternative I might consider it if that solves my problem
for the future resizes I might need.

In future I will probably not be shrinking, only growing LV's and fs's.

So... what is the trick to make this work? I cannot find it.

Thanks in advance for any pointers, tricks and/or help!
Pim