[NTLUG:Discuss] / filling up, again. 2nd try

[David]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 11:52:50PM -0500, Wayne Dahl wrote:
> This sounds even better.  So...after reading the man pages for parted,
> I'm still not sure how to use it.  Let's say I wanted to make / 2 Gigs
> (does that sound like a decent size given the way these drives are
> partitioned?), I don't really have room on hda to do that...unless I

2M for / is perhaps a bit light, particularly if you'll be keeping
lots of graphics applications.  

> move /tmp and /swap to hdc, which I'm assuming I should be able to do
> ok.  hda is a 6 Gig drive with 3.8 Gigs taken up by Win98. 

You can move any partition except / by:

  1.  create a new partition on a different drive.  format it.  mount
      it on /mnt/new or some other similar directory.

  2.  copy the files over, as root:

         cd /old/partition/mount/point
	 find . | cpio -pdlvm /mnt/new

  3.  edit /etc/fstab to refer to the new partition.

  4.  reboot.  (there are other ways, but this is simplest)

> I should
> then be able to resize perhaps /home and /usr to give the space needed
> on hdc for /tmp and /swap, move those partitions to hdc (can you use the
> parted move command to move partitions from one hd to another?), then
> use the parted resize command to make / larger?

I'd put all your partitions except / on hdc, and give / as much room
as you can.

Yes, parted can copy partitions from one device to another, but I'd
use the find/cpio technique above, so long as the partition being
moved is a Linux filesystem.  It's safer.

You can probaby say "info parted" to get the full documentation for
parted.  

Be very careful.  Back up all your data first, and TEST THE BACKUP to
be sure you can restore from it.  An untested backup is worse than no
backup at all -- it creates an undeserved sense of confidence.

-- 
David Hayes
david at hayes-family.org