Arch Linux

B7H7D7

Member

Registered: 2018-01-19

Posts: 34

[SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

I try to install Arch Linux on a Lenovo T430 used previously with Scientific Linux and later with Arch itself. The later OS was installed a long time ago and I supposed clever to restart with a fresh installation, without memory consuming softwares such as the Plasma desktop, etc.
I need to reinstall Arch to test this pc as a possible computing server before to buy a dedicated machine with a more powerful CPU and a lot of memory.
Unfortunately, although I believe having followed the installation procedure given by the Arch site, I ran into a boring difficulty :
I cannot enlarge the size of the /dev/sda1 partition, which is actually limited to 100 Mb, either with fdisk or gparted. They don't accept to resize /dev/sda1 even if I resize and move (in gparted) /dev/sda2 which follows directly the previous one partition.
The process of installation is interrupted !

Please, what to do ?
P.

Last edited by B7H7D7 (2023-10-17 12:19:08)

twelveeighty

Member

From: Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 1,240

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

If you're looking to do a fresh install, why not blow away all partitions first and then repartition the entire disk? This will obviously destroy everything on that disk, so make backups of whatever stuff you wish to keep.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,104

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

Can you post your actual layout with fdisk -l or so? I find it quite hard to believe that you're strictly unable to resize the partition. Is it vfat? That might need fatresize from the repo, but afaik gparted should be able to use that anyway

B7H7D7

Member

Registered: 2018-01-19

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

Thanks for your answer.
I am afraid to delete /dev/sda1 because it has a special role with the EFI !
P.

B7H7D7

Member

Registered: 2018-01-19

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

@V1del
The partition sda1 is FAT 32.
The others ext4 (sda3, swap)

I am always under root@archiso during the process of installation.
Thus, using another machine, I report here what I think is important and I can see on the screen :

Disk /dev/sda 931 GiB
Disk label type: GPT

/dev/sda1 4096 208895 100M EFI System
/dev/sda2 208896 1935060991 922.6 G Linux filesystem
/deb/sda3 1935065127 1953520064 8.8G Linux swap

NOTA : for gparted, I use an old version 1.0 while the current one is 1.5.
Why ? Because my only CD burner is on the machine where I try a new Arch OS AND because, having tried to boot the recent gparted from two USB keys does not work. The Bios see the keys but does not accept to boot them!

Hoping this is useful !
P.

Last edited by B7H7D7 (2023-10-16 16:44:25)

B7H7D7

Member

Registered: 2018-01-19

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

Please V1del see the BUGS section in man fatresize  :
Yo can't resize FAT32 partition lesser than 512 Mb because Windows doesn't work properly with small FAT32 file system. Use FAT16.

Maybe a cause and a possible solution ?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,104

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

Potentially, but why would you want to resize it? If it's the ESP, just reuse it as such and setup refind/grub which can read stuff from it. But in a general sense if you want to set it up fresh anyway there'd not be much issue with wiping and repartitioning everything. The "special" role of it is simply being the ESP which you can recreate however you want to: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 61,611

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

Shrinking sda2 to the right is gonna take a couple of hours, you don't seem to intend to install windows so even iff the fatresize claim is true, I don't see why it would the relevant and, coming back to #7:

I ran into a boring difficulty: I cannot enlarge the size of the /dev/sda1 partition, which is actually limited to 100 Mb, either with fdisk or gparted

This seems an xy-problem? What kind of difficulty would that pose?

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B7H7D7

Member

Registered: 2018-01-19

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot enlarge /dev/sda1 limited to 100 Mb

I decided to delete the first two partitions and rebuild them from free space (even if this is not really useful according to V1del; yesterday I had done probably some mistake during the installation, which resulted in an error message regarding the size of /dev/sda1; or maybe I had not fully understood something !).

However, I maintain that it was not possible on my system to increase /dev/sda1 directly, obviously after having managed a free space between sda1 and sda2 (which were and are always now strictly contiguous). The only possibility was to delete them and rebuild them.

Installation of Arch is now completed and working.

Thanks to all.
P.

Last edited by B7H7D7 (2023-10-17 12:27:00)