[SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

ijiboom · 2012-05-20 18:37:22

Hi
Today I decided to install windows alongside my already-existing Arch install, and my Gparted livecd told me that I cannot create more than 4 primary partitions in one hard disk. Since I had used the auto-partition option in the installation, I have one /boot partition , one swap partition, one / partition (EXT4) and one /home partition (EXT4). How can I reduce these to one partition without reinstalling the whole thing and not losing any data? is that even possible? I have tried doing it in the installer itself at the very beginning, but it somehow did not let me...

Thanks in advance

Last edited by ijiboom (2012-05-21 17:35:18)

litemotiv · 2012-05-20 18:57:29

If your root partition is large enough, you should be able to copy your existing /boot and /home to temporary folders on the root partition, then unmount those partitions and name the temporary folders back to /boot and /home. Lastly you comment out or remove the unneeded mountpoints from fstab.

ijiboom · 2012-05-20 20:08:11

Thanks for the quick answer! I copied all the files from /dev/sda4 (home partition) to /home in /dev/sda3 (my root partition). Same thing for /boot. I then deleted the two first lines in fstab: UUID=39764dba-f44d-4782-8f61-d0ede890d7ad /home ext4 defaults 0 1
UUID=7315375e-461c-4ba8-a928-ccd65fde5faf /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
But I don't know what to remplace them with... I tried booting with that config, but Arch didn't find my /home folder... Good thing I backed up the fstab!
What do I do now?

PS: I didn't delete /dev/sda1 (boot) and /dev/sda4 (home) should I have?

Last edited by ijiboom (2012-05-20 20:10:13)

litemotiv · 2012-05-20 20:21:38

You didn't copy /home and /boot to / when they were mounted did you? Because in that case you may have copied them back to themselves.

ijiboom · 2012-05-20 20:25:48

No I did it from a recovery Puppy linux USB stick

ijiboom · 2012-05-20 20:26:27

I think I should have deleted the partitions maybe, and kept the two lines in fstab... Would that work?

litemotiv · 2012-05-20 21:22:00

ijiboom wrote:

I think I should have deleted the partitions maybe, and kept the two lines in fstab... Would that work?

The idea of separate partitions is that they replace the /boot and /home directories which are by default on your root. So if you copy everything back to there and then stop the separate partitions from being mounted (by commenting them out in fstab), everything should work from your single root partition.

Edit: Oh darn, i forgot you would also have to reinstall grub in that case, sorry... For now, the easiest would probably be to keep /boot like it is on a separate partition. /home should work just fine on your root partition, and if you have enough ram you can easily do without a swap partition.

Awebb · 2012-05-21 05:00:19

Now you're saying it… I can't think of an option that creates logic partitions in the AIF.

Lone_Wolf · 2012-05-21 13:30:46

It sounds like the auto-install part needs to be changed so it creates atleast /home (possibly also / ) as an extended/logical partition.

Personally i partition manually whenever i install arch, usually outside of AIF.

On-Topic :

- copy your / and /home to an external drive
- delete / and /home partitions
- create a primary partition for windows
- in the remaining free space create 2 logical partitions for / and home
- copy / and /home to their new partitions
- change grub configuration

alternative :
- copy your / and /home to an external drive
- delete swap, / and /home partitions
create 2 primary partitions , 1 for windows 1 for arch
setup arch to use LVM (check wiki) so you can have swap, / and /home on the same partition.

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2012-05-21 13:38:06)

ijiboom · 2012-05-21 15:21:36

Ok! Just got it working right now. The mistake I had made was i forgot to chown the home folder. Now the whole OS runs in three partitions (can't be bothered to delete /boot and reinstall grub and stuff...).

litemotiv · 2012-05-21 15:25:29

ijiboom wrote:

Ok! Just got it working right now. The mistake I had made was i forgot to chown the home folder. Now the whole OS runs in three partitions (can't be bothered to delete /boot and reinstall grub and stuff...).

Excellent, don't forget to mark your thread solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-05-20 18:37:22

[SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#2 2012-05-20 18:57:29

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#3 2012-05-20 20:08:11

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#4 2012-05-20 20:21:38

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#5 2012-05-20 20:25:48

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#6 2012-05-20 20:26:27

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#7 2012-05-20 21:22:00

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#8 2012-05-21 05:00:19

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#9 2012-05-21 13:30:46

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#10 2012-05-21 15:21:36

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

#11 2012-05-21 15:25:29

Re: [SOLVED] Reduce arch install to one partition

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