Arch Linux

spellcaster420

Member

Registered: 2024-09-22

Posts: 6

[SOLVED] I need help repartitioning my file system

recently I was trying to install blackarch on top of arch (because I'm trying to learn cyber security) and I've noticed a problem and that is my /(root) partition is only 50GB but to fully install all of blackarch and for that I'll need 60GB of space just for the tools (I know I wont need all of the tools it'll just be nice to have them and also I want to have some extra space available for the future if I ever wanted or needed it).
I have my /home as a separate partition and it's about 460GB and they are both ext4 so I wondered is it possible for me to backup my /home and then format the partition and then make that into 2 separate partitions (one 100-120gigs for my /(root) and the rest for my /home) and then copy the contents of my old / into my new / and then format the old / and connect the remaining to each other to get a full /home partition(I'll divide the 100-120giga bytes by 512 bytes [my sector size] to get the number of sectors I'll need to get 100-120 giga bytes and then subtract that from the number of my last sector to get the start of my new / partition and the end of it would be my last sector and if I calculated that correctly the starting sector of my old / can be the starting sector of my new /home and the starting sector of my new / can be the end of my new /home)
would that work or do I have to reinstall arch or change the directory that pacman installs package inside of?
thank you in advance.

Last edited by spellcaster420 (2024-09-25 02:43:42)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,206

Re: [SOLVED] I need help repartitioning my file system

That approach will work, but I'd not wipe everything. Make a backup, because partitioning operations can go wrong so you need to have a backup for the worst case (.... and make sure the drive you're backing up to is a linux file system, or your perms will get lost) and then use a gparted live disk or so to shrink and move /home and expand root. Assuming all goes well you won't need to copy over the backed up data.

spellcaster420

Member

Registered: 2024-09-22

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] I need help repartitioning my file system

That approach will work, but I'd not wipe everything. Make a backup, because partitioning operations can go wrong so you need to have a backup for the worst case (.... and make sure the drive you're backing up to is a linux file system, or your perms will get lost) and then use a gparted live disk or so to shrink and move /home and expand root. Assuming all goes well you won't need to copy over the backed up data.

right, but I don't have any available external storage to format and backup my entire system to. I have one usb drive that I can install gparted to and my brothers hard drive to copy and paste my files to and I can't format that because he has important things inside of it. the most I can do to backup is to copy my /home directory into my brothers external hdd

Last edited by spellcaster420 (2024-09-24 00:23:49)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,206

Re: [SOLVED] I need help repartitioning my file system

If your brothers external HDD is not a linux file system you will have to fix perms in case things go wrong which can be hairy (somewhat, if it's just about "normal" user data those perms will get reapplied when copying back over and things are going to be fine). But all of this is worst case scenario, "normally" shrinking and expanding and moving partitions with gparted will work without a hitch, worst case scenario being power loss/kernel crash in the middle of the operation, if we don't assume this happening you will have a working but relevantly repartitioned setup in a couple minutes

Last edited by V1del (2024-09-24 07:59:15)

spellcaster420

Member

Registered: 2024-09-22

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] I need help repartitioning my file system

it worked!!!
I used gparted and its simple and easy to understand gui and now I have fully reparationed my drives. I didn't even back any thing up and everything turned out right at the end. I've tried rebooting and turning my laptop on and off and not even one error or corrupt data. originally it didn't boot the gui but I changed from the default settings to the one that said vga=normal and it booted fine.
thanks a lot for your help.