Disk Partiotioning

[Gustavo Seabra]

Jeff Vian wrote:

>On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 06:32 -0600, Gustavo Seabra wrote:
>  
>
>>Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Gustavo Seabra wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>C. Linus Hicks wrote:
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>On Mon, 2004-11-22 at 10:47 -0600, Gustavo Seabra wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>>>That was my second mistake ;-) I didn't use LVM... The way I saw it 
>>>>>>is, since I only have one HD, why should I need LVM? Now, from your 
>>>>>>post, it seems that LVM has advantages even for single HD, is that 
>>>>>>right?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>By the way, since I didn't use LVM, and wat to increase the size of 
>>>>>>/ (root) taking space from /home, am I just screwed?
>>>>>>  
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Not necessarilly, it depends mostly on your partition layout. What
>>>>>partitions have you defined - please give device (disk) names and mount
>>>>>points.
>>>>>
>>>>>If you are in a situation where you can either temporarily delete a
>>>>>partition after having backed it up, or shrink an existing one to 
>>>>>create
>>>>>a new one, then you should have some options available to you.
>>>>>
>>>>>Do a "man resize2fs" and read that.
>>>>>
>>>>> 
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>Sorry, I just found a way to get the info. Here is the result of df -h:
>>>>Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
>>>>/dev/sda3             4.9G  4.2G  427M  91% /
>>>>/dev/sda1              99M   17M   78M  18% /boot
>>>>none                  125M     0  125M   0% /dev/shm
>>>>/dev/sda2              12G  683M   11G   7% /home
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Instead of "df -h", "fdisk -l" would have been more useful.  We want 
>>>to see the actual partition layout of the partition table....
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>What I'd like to do is to take a couple of Gigs from /home and put 
>>>>them into / (root). I believe I can backup and erase /home without 
>>>>problems, but how can I put this space into root?
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>*IF* sda2 and sda3 are contiguous in the partition table (probably, 
>>>but not guarenteed without looking at the actual allocation info) you 
>>>might be able to resize(move) sda3 to the upper regions, re-size the 
>>>partition sda3, then merge the new space onto the end of sda2.  If you 
>>>are lucky, you should then be able to expand sda2 into the re-claimed 
>>>space.  Not easy, but it should be straightforward if you know the 
>>>right commands.
>>>If you have no experience doing this, I'd heartily recommend backing 
>>>up the data in both sda2 & sda3 before attempting this for a first time!
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Thanks
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Good Luck!
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Thanks for you reply, and sorry it took me so long to answer. It took me 
>>some time to realize I needed the - in the su command to get this to 
>>work. But here it is:
>>[root at patroclus ~]# fdisk -l
>>
>>Disk /dev/sda: 18.2 GB, 18210037760 bytes
>>255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2213 cylinders
>>Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>>
>>   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>>/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
>>/dev/sda2              14        1511    12032685   83  Linux
>>/dev/sda3            1512        2148     5116702+  83  Linux
>>/dev/sda4            2149        2213      522112+   5  Extended
>>/dev/sda5            2149        2213      522081   82  Linux swap
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Looking at this information and your request above, I would recommend
>the following.
>
>1. Backup anything in the / partition that you want to keep. This
>includes config files, customizations, mail, web site data, etc.
>
>If you want to do a full backup/restore you may be able to do that by
>using tar and creating a file in /home of all the data in / (but not
>including /home and space permitting)
>
>2. Boot from some live distro such as knoppix, and use qtparted to
>resize sda2 smaller by the amount you want.
>Then remove and recreate sda3 to fill the new larger space.
>
>3. Reinstall, or restore the data for sda3.
>
>These 3 steps should handle what you are asking for
>
>  
>
Thanks Jeff,

All would work perfectly if it wasn;t for one detail: QTParted doesn't 
resize ext3 partitions, as all of my partitions (but swap) are. So, I'm 
starting to believe that, if I want more space in root, I'll really have 
to reinstall the system.

Thanks,

-- 
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Gustavo Seabra - Graduate Student
Chemistry Department
Kansas State University
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