[SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

wolfdogg · 2011-06-19 04:33:40

i let arch configure the partitions after running into a couple small problems on initial isntall. the root directory is now too small. i think this i why i have a couple programs locking up on me, and reporting out of memory error.

whats the best way to increase the size of my root partition. i do have KDE partition manager installed onto KDE over here. i can use that, but it appears i might have to unmount the drives to do this, while they are in use, that wont exactly work will it.

im thinking there might be an easier way to increase the size. will cfdisk do that? i dont want to lose any data or do any reinstalls, i just want to move up my /home directory by about 5 gigs, and add that space to the root.

my current set up is as follows.
300GB SATA hard drive
/dev/sda1 ext2 /boot 100MB
/dev/sda2 linuxswap 250MB
/dev/sda3 ext4 / 7GB
/dev/sda4 ext4 /home 290GB

im thouroughly versed in partitioning, just not for linux op sys's, but its almost identical to any other operating system, or linux based partitioner. so i just need a push in the right direction mostly.

looking back, for those of you who are wondering why i have such a large root drive space, i do remember seeing a piling mount of trance .mp3's in one of the root directorys because its buffering the music before playing across the lan. ill bet if i clean up that directory ill get alot of space back, :-) Also, my apache server is on the root part, so i need more space for web files too.

---------------------------
hmmm, i just looked and found 1.8GB in the /var/tmp/kdecache-myusername
how do i keep this one clean automatically?

Last edited by wolfdogg (2011-06-21 08:59:55)

pottzie · 2011-06-19 04:47:14

I think you could use gparted to change the size of your partitions. I'd wait and see if anyone has any input on this, but you can download and burn a cd and use it to make partitions larger or shrink them if you want to "Rob Peter to pay Paul" as far as partition sizes go.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

wolfdogg · 2011-06-19 04:50:59

ok, thanks for that info. when you say burn a cd, you mean gparted correct? theres a standalone that will work on cd then? sounds like that will work.

now that you mention it, i have a partitioner on cd already, if i was going to go that route i have a copy of Easeus Partitioner which is a pretty good one, that will work fine for this.

any body else then?

siriusb · 2011-06-19 06:43:05

I use SystemRescueCd, you can find all the tools you may need in every situation.

I think there is no sense having a 250 MB swap. If you really need swap when the need arises you can always mount a swap file which you can make on your /home.

When you shrink your /home it will take lot of time, since you want space from the beginning of it, so gparted (or whatever) has to move the whole content. If you have an extra hdd it is strongly advised to make backup (rsync, fsarchiver) before resizing just in case.

wolfdogg · 2011-06-19 09:10:14

well, ill just use the cd i have over here, i just created it last week, it even uses linux as its base op sys. not sure what build. yeah, /home will take a while to move forward, i was expecting that i will need to take a long break on that one. i hate to walk away while the pc is working, i would rather multitask it to death. but in this case, no chance. lol.

so i should just delete the swap? i have 4gb ram also. while were on the subject, would a larger swap be more appropriate? say 4GB? or does that not help anything in the linux world? i dont need to delete it just to recover the 250mb of space though. its fine like it is in that case. will the system work just as fast without one?

im going to forego the backup because this is a fresh build, and i have yet to have a disaster when partitioning using a cd, either partition magic, or easeus. and i have not put more than a month into this system yet, and i can rebuild it in a couple days at this point. all my crucial data is on my fileshare machine. i dont use this home partition for anything other than getting the job done on linux.

im sure at some point i will complete the paradigm shift and use the /home directory for the crucial stuff and take it of the windows fileshare machine. ooh, did i say windows? sorry.

Larsson · 2011-06-19 10:29:35

If you don't use your /home for anything important, then make a backup of your userfolder. Then using a livecd delete your home, increase your root (since it seems to be located right before your home according to your first post), recreate the home partition, and copy back your backup.

Another thing you can do is to delete your swap (you really don't need swap if you have 4GB of ram and not using suspend and hibernate). You then can create another primary partition. Decrease your /home partition, create a new one at the end and mount /etc or another big part of the filesystem there.

hokasch · 2011-06-19 10:52:55

You could also use "mount --bind" to shift diskspace from home to /, but better use that for temp files/apache files only, and make sure to set proper permissions. Cleaning out pacman's cage may free up some space as well.

bharani · 2011-06-19 10:57:53

You can also make a new partion in the free space available and move /var to it. Pacman stores its cache in this directory.

siriusb · 2011-06-19 11:48:09

Larsson has a point, you should follow his (hope I am correct ) advise regarding recreating /home.
I have 3GB RAM and usually swap isn't touched at all. The only time I need swap when a VirtualBox machine is running with 1GB dedicated memory along with 2 copies of Firefox, Netbeans and other stuff. But if I had one more GB memory I wouldn't need swap at all (I dont use hibarnate / suspend).

And there may be too many packages in pacman's cache (/var/cache/pacman/pkg), you can clean this with pacman -Sc or pacman -Scc.

wolfdogg · 2011-06-19 20:56:12

thanks for the replies, there is 864MB in /var/cache/pacman/pkg , 819mb after -Sc, and 40kB after -Scc. :-) after cleaning out pacman, and the kde-cache i have 1.6Gb free of 7gb.

one thing i wanted to note i do use some heavy programs, i run Zend studio and that problem wreaks havoc on the system, at the same time in streaming in music across the lan on desktop 4, running dolphin on d3, a copy of xterm or konsole on d5, and studio and chromium share d1, chromium usually has about 10 tabs open, and apache and proftpd/mysqld are running, along with the KDE environment. not sure if i could get away without a swap in that case, i dont suspend or hibernate, i usually shut down if leaving for more than 12 hrs.

can i still delete the swap part given this?

i like the idea of deleting home, and recreating it, because it will be faster, i can just copy over the files to a 500Gb drive thats also in the system.

in my /home/user i do have zend studio installed there because i didnt know where the best place to install it, i would like to remove it, and then nstall it in /usr/local/bin is this a good idea? then i have wine installed so i could run NuSpheres PHPEd, but i dont like wine on the system at all, so i would like to remove that, and use studio exclusively and remove phped.

i dont like to install things in the user directory at all. i like to use the home/user directory for backing up files only, not installations. where is the "good practice" place to install apps?

Larsson · 2011-06-20 08:16:30

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Swap

Ashren · 2011-06-20 09:30:04

For your next install use LVM2.

Lone_Wolf · 2011-06-20 10:51:23

wolfdogg wrote:

in my /home/user i do have zend studio installed there because i didnt know where the best place to install it, i would like to remove it, and then nstall it in /usr/local/bin is this a good idea? then i have wine installed so i could run NuSpheres PHPEd, but i dont like wine on the system at all, so i would like to remove that, and use studio exclusively and remove phped.
i dont like to install things in the user directory at all. i like to use the home/user directory for backing up files only, not installations. where is the "good practice" place to install apps?

/usr, but to avoid conflicts with other packages it is recommended to create a PKGBUILD for any additional software.
Search arch wiki for ABS , AUR to learn more .

NictraSavios · 2011-06-20 14:35:06

If your recreating your partitions

MAKE SURE YOUR NOT USING GRUB2 OR UUID'S IN /ETC/FSTAB

unless you want the very fun job of using the grub rescue console, only to find out init cant find your /home, being droped to the rescue shell and recovering your system from there.... I hope you know vi

Last edited by NictraSavios (2011-06-20 14:36:16)

wolfdogg · 2011-06-20 20:29:02

well,

#
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
shm /dev/shm tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0
#/dev/cdrom /media/cd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
#/dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
#/dev/fd0 /media/fl auto user,noauto 0 0
UUID=1bfda6a1-e889-419e-b636-9b65cd32d1e3 swap swap defaults 0 0
UUID=916db1b3-f70b-4f50-941a-f0f8ab2d6be5 /home ext4 defaults 0 1
UUID=92135cad-5b09-40b7-93a5-d64149a8f0ba /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
UUID=a46be4f4-1087-4202-b69c-e4ce55763a15 / ext4 defaults 0 1

i didnt think ahead of that problem, experience in that one is what i need. i always say, you dont learn unless you break it first.
what now? should i change the line UUID=916db1b3-f70b-4f50-941a-f0f8ab2d6be5 /home ext4 defaults 0 1
to
/dev/sda4 /home ext4 defaults 0 1
or should i change all of them? note, i use uuis for a purpose, i have hot swappable datas, and i do exercise my right to hot swap them, lol.
?

-------
EDIT
im in a crunch im getting some system problems because the free space fills up to 0 now and then, so im going to leave the fstab info as it is, move my 2 largest directories in my user directory /archive and /backup and symlink them, then just push the partition forward. i think ill try that first just to get my system back up to par.

if i dont return, send out the rescue team and the search dogs. :-)

Last edited by wolfdogg (2011-06-20 20:50:39)

Brcher · 2011-06-20 23:43:17

This may be slightly off point, but I was also running out of space in /. My solution was to go to /etc/pacman.conf and chage the location of CacheDir. On one computer, I had some extra unpartitioned space, so I make a /pkgcache partition and just kept it there. On another, I just made a folder: /home/pkgcache and put it there.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but it worked for me. And it didn't involve shrinking/moving any partitions. That seems terrifying.

ewaller · 2011-06-21 01:48:12

I think you should look at how to change root.

Edit: Never mind -- I thought you were fighting with Grub. It is still something you might put in your tool belt

Last edited by ewaller (2011-06-21 01:49:56)

wolfdogg · 2011-06-21 08:59:40

well, i resized it today, it took more than 6 hours, i have never seen a partition cd that caused it to work so slowly. but it did a read only copy test at first, that was 2 hours. then i spent 4 hours moving a 260gb partition to the right by 30gb, but there was only 17gb of data on it. so next time i think i will opt for deleting the partition.

it looks like it moved it bit my bit, very methodically, more so than any other partition program i have seen. makes me think that all the others that i have used in the past caused my data to be in danger, even though moving partitions us usually foolproof. :-)

oh yeah, the easeus part cd didnt work, i think it didnt support ext4 , so i downloaded systemrestorecd, thanks siriusb for that suggestion. its an awesome tool.

Last edited by wolfdogg (2011-06-21 09:01:06)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-19 04:33:40

[SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#2 2011-06-19 04:47:14

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#3 2011-06-19 04:50:59

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#4 2011-06-19 06:43:05

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#5 2011-06-19 09:10:14

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#6 2011-06-19 10:29:35

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#7 2011-06-19 10:52:55

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#8 2011-06-19 10:57:53

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#9 2011-06-19 11:48:09

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#10 2011-06-19 20:56:12

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#11 2011-06-20 08:16:30

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#12 2011-06-20 09:30:04

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#13 2011-06-20 10:51:23

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#14 2011-06-20 14:35:06

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#15 2011-06-20 20:29:02

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#16 2011-06-20 23:43:17

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#17 2011-06-21 01:48:12

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

#18 2011-06-21 08:59:40

Re: [SOLVED] uhoh, need to increase size of / partition

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