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#1 2009-06-09 14:33:27

jazzi
Member
From: Xiamen
Registered: 2006-10-30
Posts: 57

How to ajust partition size?

My file system is EXT4,
my /usr is too small and / is too big.
I want to enlarge the /usr and get / smaller.

How can I finish this ajustment job?

Thanks.
jazzi

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#2 2009-06-09 14:38:24

lucke
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2004-11-30
Posts: 4,018

Re: How to ajust partition size?

Boot some LiveCD (eg. this one) and use gparted. It's always a good idea to have backups.

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#3 2009-06-10 00:34:04

jazzi
Member
From: Xiamen
Registered: 2006-10-30
Posts: 57

Re: How to ajust partition size?

Thanks Lucke,

Can gParted take care of ext4 well?

Do you mean I have to
first: backup data
second: delete / and /usr
then: make new partition again.

am I right? or I don't need to delete the partitions and the gparted can ajust them?

Thanks
jazzi

Last edited by jazzi (2009-06-10 00:36:28)

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#4 2009-06-10 00:50:19

Peasantoid
Member
Registered: 2009-04-26
Posts: 928
Website

Re: How to ajust partition size?

GParted handles ext4 just fine. You do NOT need to delete your partitions — just resize them. (Note that you can't be booted into your Arch system while you do this.)

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#5 2009-06-10 01:44:37

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: How to ajust partition size?

Be warned that gparted sometimes wrecks havoc when shrinking/moving partitions. Sometimes it seems to do everything correctly but leaves partitions overlapping (not to mention the mess it makes of the partition table) and then it will refuse the undo the damage it did.

I strongly advise you to backup any important data before you start. If anything goes wrong at least you have backups.


R00KIE
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#6 2009-06-10 02:06:52

fukawi2
Ex-Administratorino
From: .vic.au
Registered: 2007-09-28
Posts: 6,217
Website

Re: How to ajust partition size?

R00KIE wrote:

I strongly advise you to backup any important data before you start. If anything goes wrong at least you have backups.

+1

This will also be a very long operation to complete. Depending on the size of your partitions, it could take many hours, and you do not want to interrupt it once it's started. Make sure you've got a good power source and won't have to shut down or anything when you do it.

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#7 2009-06-10 09:14:32

void_false
Member
Registered: 2009-02-22
Posts: 13

Re: How to ajust partition size?

Nothing can beat the partedMagic livecd. Yesterday I resized my arch partition (ext4) from 80gb to 120 gb. Took 45 minutes.

http://partedmagic.com/

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#8 2009-06-10 10:45:30

R00KIE
Forum Fellow
From: Between a computer and a chair
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 4,734

Re: How to ajust partition size?

From my experience anything that only changes the end boundary of the partitions seems to be so so safe (growing is safer than shrinking).
If for some reason you want to change the start boundary of any partition by moving the partition, or as it seems to be the case here, shrink one partition and then grow the other partition to fill the empty space, then it's almost like playing the lottery .... except that you have more chances that anything will go wrong than winning the lottery.

As for partedMagic, it uses gparted, I'd rather get the gparted livecd directly as most probably it is more up-to-date and contains tools with less bugs.
Or even better, install Arch to one usb stick and install all the tools you think you will need, just pacman -Syu before you start and you're good to go, can't get better than that big_smile


R00KIE
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#9 2009-06-10 14:05:46

perbh
Member
From: Republic of Texas
Registered: 2005-03-04
Posts: 765

Re: How to ajust partition size?

If one first have to back it all up anyway - why not just combine the two into _one_ big partition. Personally I set aside 20 gigs for all things OS-related, all on one partition. That way the OS is nicely insulated against anything else I may (or may not) want to do and 20 gigs is certainly more than sufficient. Infact, 10 gigs is usually more than sufficient but I like room to grow ... just incase - and with time there is a tendency to bloat.
I have never ever seen the point of splitting the OS into several partitions, with the possible exceptions of /boot and/or /home though for personal files I'd rather have a 'common fs' for all possible/impossible OS's rather than lumping them under /home.

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#10 2009-06-10 14:17:17

gazj
Member
From: /home/gazj -> /uk/cambs
Registered: 2007-02-09
Posts: 681
Website

Re: How to ajust partition size?

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