[ILUG] Partition resize

[Niall O Broin]

On Saturday 17 January 2004 14:04, matthew lemon wrote:

> No. Type          Start  End    Use    Free
> 1 Linux           1      765    /      1 %
> 2 Linux           766    7522   /home  81 %
> 3 Linux swap      7523   7652   swap
>
> There used to be a 4th partition /dev/sda4 which had 50Gb on it.  That
> partition wasn't being used so I want to add the space from that onto the
> partition /dev/sda2 mounted as /home.
>
> Can anyone explain the best way to accomplish this ?

You can't simply add 4 to 2 because 3 is in the way (unless you're using LVM 
or somesuch, and I guess you would have said if you were). So, you need to 
delete 2,3 and 4, make a new bigger 2, make a 3 for swap, and use resize2fs. 

Steps as follows (comments preced by # as usual - all others command to be 
carried out as root)

# back up the data on /home

# back up the data on /home to a different physical medium

# no command given here, because there are so many different ways of
# doing this.

# put the system in single user mode

init 1

# stop using sda3 for swap

swapoff /dev/sda3

# unmount the filesystem on /dev/sda2

umount /home

# now you must delete partitions 2,3 and 4, make a new bigger 2 (for /home)
# and make a new partition 3 (for swap). The new 2 MUST begin at the same
# sector as the old one, which will be the default if you follow the above
# instructions.

fdisk /dev/sda

# resize the ext2 filesystem on partition 2 to be the size of partition 2
# with progress bars for that warm fuzzy feeling

resize2fs -p /dev/sda2

# create swapspace on partition 3

mkswap /dev/sda3

# mount the new enlarged /home filesystem

mount /dev/sda2 /home

# and check your data integrity in whichever way suits you e.g. by comparison
# of checksums with the backup copy.


If the above results in anything breaking, you get to keep ALL the pieces.
And most important of all - the above assumes that you're using ext2 on /home. 
If you're not, the above won't work so don't do it. I'm sure there are 
resizing programs available for other filesystem types but I haven't used 
them.


-- 
Niall