[gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Lord Sauron]

This isn't exactly Gentoo-related, however, you guys tend to be the
most command-line savvy group, and this is all about the command line
at the moment...

I have three partitions on my workstation's hard drive.

/dev/sda1 = ntfs (windows)
/dev/sda3 = linux-swap
/dev/sda4 = ext3 (SuSE 10.1)

Where sda2 should be used to be and XFS partition for Kubuntu.

My question is thus: how would I tack that free space onto sda4?  I
don't want to reinstall SuSE if I don't have to.

Throwing out an educated guess, do I have to delete sda3, and then
make sda4 bigger, leaving enough space for sda5 (linux-swap)?

I'm just throwing that idea out there, 'cause I don't know.

I'm using a Kubuntu Live-CD, for those who might ask.  I considered a
Gentoo live-cd, but I couldn't find any copies so I was sort of stuck.

Thanks for any help!

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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Joe Menola]

On Thursday 19 October 2006 7:02 pm, Lord Sauron wrote:
> I have three partitions on my workstation's hard drive.
>
> /dev/sda1 = ntfs (windows)
> /dev/sda3 = linux-swap
> /dev/sda4 = ext3 (SuSE 10.1)
>
> Where sda2 should be used to be and XFS partition for Kubuntu.
>
> My question is thus: how would I tack that free space onto sda4?  I
> don't want to reinstall SuSE if I don't have to.
>
> Throwing out an educated guess, do I have to delete sda3, and then
> make sda4 bigger, leaving enough space for sda5 (linux-swap)?

If you delete sda3, sda4 then becomes sda3, so your Suse fstab will require 
changes to reflect this. In theroy, resizing what was sda4 to fill the space 
gained by deleting sda3 should work. 
I'd suggest resizing sda3 to your desired swap partition size then formatting 
it as swap. And then resizing sda4 to grab what space is left over. Then your 
Suse partition will remain sda4. 
Of course, backing up any data of importantce is highly recommended before 
doing anything.

-jm

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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Norberto Bensa]

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Joe Menola wrote:
> If you delete sda3, sda4 then becomes sda3, 

Nope. Partitions below 5 are primary partitions. If you delete one of them, 
nothing changes. 

Perhaps I undertood OP incorrectly and he wants to move sda4 to sda3. 


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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Lord Sauron]

On 10/19/06, Norberto Bensa <nbensa@gmx.net> wrote:
> Joe Menola wrote:
> > If you delete sda3, sda4 then becomes sda3,
>
> Nope. Partitions below 5 are primary partitions. If you delete one of them,
> nothing changes.
>
> Perhaps I undertood OP incorrectly and he wants to move sda4 to sda3.

lsauron@the-dark-tower:~> cat /etc/fstab
/dev/sda4            /                    ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/sda3            swap                 swap       defaults              0 0
### bunch of free space ####
/dev/sda1            /media/sda1          ntfs
ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8

That's what's happening.

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V? PS- PE+ Y-(--) PGP- t+++ 5? X R tv-- b+
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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Norberto Bensa]

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> lsauron@the-dark-tower:~> cat /etc/fstab
> /dev/sda4            /                    ext3       acl,user_xattr       
> 1 1 /dev/sda3            swap                 swap       defaults          
>    0 0 ### bunch of free space ####
> /dev/sda1            /media/sda1          ntfs
> ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8
>
> That's what's happening.

What's the output of:

fdisk -l /dev/sda

?


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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Daniel Barkalow]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, Lord Sauron wrote:

> This isn't exactly Gentoo-related, however, you guys tend to be the
> most command-line savvy group, and this is all about the command line
> at the moment...
> 
> I have three partitions on my workstation's hard drive.
> 
> /dev/sda1 = ntfs (windows)
> /dev/sda3 = linux-swap
> /dev/sda4 = ext3 (SuSE 10.1)
> 
> Where sda2 should be used to be and XFS partition for Kubuntu.
> 
> My question is thus: how would I tack that free space onto sda4?  I
> don't want to reinstall SuSE if I don't have to.

You can't really do this in any straightforward way. The easiest thing is 
probably to back up the filesystem on sda4 with something like tar, wipe 
out sda3 and sda4, create a new sda2 (ext3) and sda3 (swap), and untar the 
backed up filesystem onto sda2.

The main issue is that ext3 doesn't support resizing. You need to create a 
new filesystem in order to get a different size. Furthermore, partitions 
are addressed from the beginning, which means that moving the beginning 
will completely change everything.

What I'd do is create a new /dev/sda2 and put home directories there. This 
has a number of minor benefits (and minor drawbacks), but the main thing 
is that you'll have more accessible storage for linux without changing 
your existing filesystem. (And you can move a lot of stuff to the new 
space, leaving more space free on the existing partition)

E.g.:

 Back up everything, in case you screw up or my instructions are wrong.
 Create a new partition 2 on sda with all of the free storage.
 Mount the existing sda4 on /mnt/sda4
 mke2fs -j /dev/sda2
 Mount the new sda2 on /mnt/sda2
 cp -a /mnt/sda4/home /mnt/sda2
 mv /mnt/sda4/home /mnt/sda4/home-old
 mkdir /mnt/sda4/home
 Edit /mnt/sda4/etc/fstab to add an entry for /dev/sda2 on /home as ext3.
 Make sure the it all boots correctly, and comes up with your user(s) home 
  directories correctly, and that you have /home listed in the result of 
  "mount".
 When you're really sure, "rm -rf /home-old" to reclaim the space.

Drawbacks: /home and / will fill up independantly, so you can run out of 
 space on one when there's still space on the other, and balancing these 
 is a pain.
Benefits: if you fill up /home, things that are trying to write to / won't 
 have problems while you clear out more space. Also, if you decide to 
 ditch SuSE in favor of (for example) Gentoo, your home directory is 
 separate from your system files, so most of the stuff you'll want to keep 
 is separate from the stuff you're ditching with SuSE.

	-Daniel
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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Dirk Heinrichs]

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Am Freitag, 20. Oktober 2006 02:02 schrieb ext Lord Sauron:

> I have three partitions on my workstation's hard drive.
>
> /dev/sda1 = ntfs (windows)
> /dev/sda3 = linux-swap
> /dev/sda4 = ext3 (SuSE 10.1)
>
> Where sda2 should be used to be and XFS partition for Kubuntu.
>
> My question is thus: how would I tack that free space onto sda4?  I
> don't want to reinstall SuSE if I don't have to.

You could use bootit-ng's (ask google) partition editing tools (don't know 
wether parted would do the job also), to move sda3 right behind sda1, then 
close the new gap by moving sda4 also. Not sure, but I think this would 
also rename the devices (sda3 -> sda2, sda4 -> sda3).

You can then grow sda4 to whatever you need.

Famous last words: Although I never had problems with bootit-ng, remember to 
backup your stuff before you start.

HTH...

	Dirk
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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Dirk Heinrichs]

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Am Freitag, 20. Oktober 2006 07:47 schrieb ext Daniel Barkalow:

> You can't really do this in any straightforward way.

Yes, he can. You know there are partitioning tools out there.

> The main issue is that ext3 doesn't support resizing.

Plain wrong.

> What I'd do is create a new /dev/sda2 and put home directories there.

Without knowing the size?

Bye...

	Dirk
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[gentoo-user] Re: Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Alexander Skwar]

· Joe Menola <menola@sbcglobal.net>:

> On Thursday 19 October 2006 7:02 pm, Lord Sauron wrote:
>> I have three partitions on my workstation's hard drive.
>>
>> /dev/sda1 = ntfs (windows)
>> /dev/sda3 = linux-swap
>> /dev/sda4 = ext3 (SuSE 10.1)
>>
>> Where sda2 should be used to be and XFS partition for Kubuntu.
>>
>> My question is thus: how would I tack that free space onto sda4?  I
>> don't want to reinstall SuSE if I don't have to.
>>
>> Throwing out an educated guess, do I have to delete sda3, and then
>> make sda4 bigger, leaving enough space for sda5 (linux-swap)?
> 
> If you delete sda3, sda4 then becomes sda3,

No, it doesn't. The first four partitions on a hard drive are
"fixed", ie. partition 4 will always stay partition 4 and it's
perfectly valid to have, eg. sda1, sda3 & sda4 but no sda2.

> so your Suse fstab will require  
> changes to reflect this. In theroy, resizing what was sda4 to fill the space 
> gained by deleting sda3 should work. 

No, it won't. Problem (probably) is, that the available space is "in
front of" sda4. So, if he'd delete sda3 as well, he could move sda4
to the beginning of the disk. Partition Magic (commercial) can be used 
for this; parted as well?

> Of course, backing up any data of importantce is highly recommended before 
> doing anything.

Absolutely!

Alexander Skwar
-- 
Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.


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[gentoo-user] Re: Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Alexander Skwar]

· Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org>:

> The main issue is that ext3 doesn't support resizing.

This is plain wrong. It always used to support resizing. "Lately" (like
in at least the last year, or so), even online resizing is supported by
stock kernel. The patch, which was required for this, made into the stable
kernel sources.

Alexander Skwar
-- 
Now I can finally explain to everyone why I do this.  I just got $7 worth
of free stuff for working on Debian !


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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 20:18:41 -0500, Joe Menola wrote:

> I'd suggest resizing sda3 to your desired swap partition size then
> formatting it as swap. And then resizing sda4 to grab what space is
> left over. Then your Suse partition will remain sda4. 

The problem here is that the standard filesystem resizing tools assume
that the end of the partition has changed. not the start. If there's
enough space, I'd suggest creating a new sda2, copying the contents of
sda4 to it (preferably with rsync) and setting the bootloader and fstab
to use sda2 instead of sda4. Then he can delete sda3/4, create a new swap
partition at the end of the drive and resize sda2 to whatever size he
wants.

Alternatively, just put /home onto sda2, it all depends on the size the
the partitions and their contents.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Too many clicks spoil the browse.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Mick]

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On Friday 20 October 2006 07:07, Dirk Heinrichs wrote:
> Am Freitag, 20. Oktober 2006 07:47 schrieb ext Daniel Barkalow:
> > You can't really do this in any straightforward way.
>
> Yes, he can. You know there are partitioning tools out there.
>
> > The main issue is that ext3 doesn't support resizing.
>
> Plain wrong.
>
> > What I'd do is create a new /dev/sda2 and put home directories there.
>
> Without knowing the size?

The cleanest way to do this is to boot any LiveCD and tar your fs in each 
partition/directory into another machine/server/DVD (delete as appropriate).  
Then use fdisk and create the partitions you need afresh.  I'd set sda4 as an 
extended partition and create as many logical partitions in there as you 
need.

Alternatively, assuming you have enough space delete sda2 & sda3.  Create a 
new sda2 as your swap, so as to leave enough space for a new sda3 to untar 
the SUSE fs in there.  Once done boot into your new SUSE partition (sda3) to 
check that things are working as they should, before you delete sda4.  Create 
a new sda4 to the end of the disk as an extended partition and as many 
logical partitions as you need in there.  You can play tunes with this 
scenario depending on relative partition sizes.

Easiest & quickest way to add available space to your SUSE fs (but not 
strictly speaking the partition) is to use EVM, LVM to create all sort of 
schemes for your needs.  Check the Gentoo docs & Wiki.

HTH.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Alan McKinnon]

On Friday 20 October 2006 07:47, Daniel Barkalow wrote:
> The main issue is that ext3 doesn't support resizing. You need to
> create a new filesystem in order to get a different size.
> Furthermore, partitions are addressed from the beginning, which means
> that moving the beginning will completely change everything.

Um, not true. Ext3 does support resizing and can even increase the size 
online without umounting the filesystem. To be fair, ext2online is not 
declared fully completely 100% stable, but I've never seen or heard any 
problems with it. And I use it often...

alan
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[gentoo-user] Re: Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Alexander Skwar]

· Lord Sauron <lordsauronthegreat@gmail.com>:

> On 10/20/06, Alan McKinnon <alan@linuxholdings.co.za> wrote:
>> On Friday 20 October 2006 07:47, Daniel Barkalow wrote:
>> > The main issue is that ext3 doesn't support resizing. You need to
>> > create a new filesystem in order to get a different size.
>> > Furthermore, partitions are addressed from the beginning, which means
>> > that moving the beginning will completely change everything.
>>
>> Um, not true. Ext3 does support resizing and can even increase the size
>> online without umounting the filesystem. To be fair, ext2online is not
>> declared fully completely 100% stable, but I've never seen or heard any
>> problems with it. And I use it often...
> 
> Yah, you resize ext3 with the ext2resize command.

Yes.

> I'm just scared to 
> use it because I don't know how.

Read the man page. The easiest usage (and I assume most common) is:

        ext2resize $fs

BTW: One of the most valuable tips already given in this thread
was to use EVMS or LVM. With EVMS or LVM, you just don't have 
problems like this.

Alexander Skwar
-- 
P.S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the
world like English did.  Er, *as* English did...
             -- Larry Wall in <199705201832.LAA28393@wall.org>


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Lord Sauron]

On 10/21/06, Alexander Skwar <listen@alexander.skwar.name> wrote:
> · Lord Sauron <lordsauronthegreat@gmail.com>:
> > I'm just scared to
> > use it because I don't know how.
>
> Read the man page. The easiest usage (and I assume most common) is:

I did read the man page.  The whole thing.  If counfused the heck out
of me.  I just got so scared I'd start writing over blocks belonging
to another partition or something...

What I ended up doing was backing up all my data to DVD (something I
should do periodically anyways) and then reinstalling the whole OS.
Works just fine, and I got rid of a whole mess of junk I installed and
then found out that I don't want installed.

> BTW: One of the most valuable tips already given in this thread
> was to use EVMS or LVM. With EVMS or LVM, you just don't have
> problems like this.

Next time I'm installing a system I'll look for that.  I know LVM is a
very powerful tool, but I haven't used it yet.

-- 
========== GCv3.12 ==========
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L++ E--- W+(+++) N++ o? K? w--- O? M+
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[gentoo-user] Re: Re: Scary Paritioning - Need Help

[Alexander Skwar]

· Lord Sauron <lordsauronthegreat@gmail.com>:

> On 10/21/06, Alexander Skwar <listen@alexander.skwar.name> wrote:
>> · Lord Sauron <lordsauronthegreat@gmail.com>:
>> > I'm just scared to
>> > use it because I don't know how.
>>
>> Read the man page. The easiest usage (and I assume most common) is:
> 
> I did read the man page.  The whole thing.

Great. Then there's no need for additional questions ;)

> If counfused the heck out 
> of me. 

Aha. What exactly did confuse you?

> I just got so scared

Scared about or by what?

> I'd start writing over blocks belonging  
> to another partition

With ext2resize? Close to impossible.

> or something... 

?

> What I ended up doing was backing up all my data to DVD

Backup is always a good idea, just like you wrote.

Alexander Skwar
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