adjusting partitions without a reinstall

adjusting partitions without a reinstall

[Adam Lang]

I have a /www partition I want to delete and increase the size of /.  What
is the best way to go about this without reinstalling the OS?

Adam Lang
Systems Engineer
Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
http://www.rutgersinsurance.com

Re: adjusting partitions without a reinstall

[Jens Knoell]

On Thursday 15 April 2004 12:06, Adam Lang wrote:
> I have a /www partition I want to delete and increase the size of /.  What
> is the best way to go about this without reinstalling the OS?

Depends on your ressources. Personally I would slap in a new, bigger disk, 
copy the data over and mount it as /www.

General advice there - install the OS on one disk, and keep all your data on 
another, then you can just upgrade whenever you need to.

Alternatively there are tools to change partition sizes on the fly. Has been a 
while since I used any, but a quick search on freshmeat for "partition" 
turned up quite a few:
GNU PartEd:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/gnuparted/30277/url_homepage/parted
QTParted:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/qtparted/36614/url_homepage/qtparted.sourceforge.net

plus a whole bunch of others, apparently.

Enjoy
Jen

Re: adjusting partitions without a reinstall

[Adam Lang]

Hmm, good idea, but unfortunately that won't work for me either.  The server
has two hot swap RAID 1 drives.  To add anything else, it will require
external storage.

Basically I am just looking for a temporary fix until later down the road
when I go with more storage.  The couple gigs I would be moving into the
root partition will suffice for a while.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "A. R. Vener" <salt@aero-vision.com>
To: "Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: adjusting partitions without a reinstall


> Your safest method may be to install a new hard disk, big enough for your
> foreseeable needs, copy the www root file structure
> over to the new drive and then mount it  at the www root mount point.
>
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 02:06:11PM -0400, Adam Lang wrote:
> > I have a /www partition I want to delete and increase the size of /.
What
> > is the best way to go about this without reinstalling the OS?
> >
> > Adam Lang
> > Systems Engineer
> > Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
> > http://www.rutgersinsurance.com
> >
> > -
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin"
in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: adjusting partitions without a reinstall

[Joakim Ryden]

Then you're gonna have to use something like:

http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/

and hope for the best.

--Jo

On Thursday 15 April 2004 11:47 am, Adam Lang wrote:
> Hmm, good idea, but unfortunately that won't work for me either.  The
> server has two hot swap RAID 1 drives.  To add anything else, it will
> require external storage.
>
> Basically I am just looking for a temporary fix until later down the road
> when I go with more storage.  The couple gigs I would be moving into the
> root partition will suffice for a while.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "A. R. Vener" <salt@aero-vision.com>
> To: "Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com>
> Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 1:35 PM
> Subject: Re: adjusting partitions without a reinstall
>
> > Your safest method may be to install a new hard disk, big enough for your
> > foreseeable needs, copy the www root file structure
> > over to the new drive and then mount it  at the www root mount point.
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 02:06:11PM -0400, Adam Lang wrote:
> > > I have a /www partition I want to delete and increase the size of /.
>
> What
>
> > > is the best way to go about this without reinstalling the OS?
> > >
> > > Adam Lang
> > > Systems Engineer
> > > Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company
> > > http://www.rutgersinsurance.com
> > >
> > > -
> > > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin"
>
> in
>
> > > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Re: adjusting partitions without a reinstall

[Stephen Samuel]

FOr changing partitions, parted would be the way to go.

On the other hand, since you're running RAID 1, you should be able to
swap one drive for a larger one, rebuild the mirror, then swap the second
drive and rebuild again.
After swapping out the boot drive, you may have to re-install grub/lilo/whatever.

If you can hot-swap your drives, this should be seamless for the users.
If you have to poweroff between boots, then you'll run into a problem with
grub not being installed on your primary drive after boot.

This would require that you boot with an emergency disk and re-installing
grub. (you'll need a version of grub.conf that says to find the boot partition
on the secondary drive).  Once the system is up, then you can rebuild the
mirror again. (or you can do it from the emergency boot system)

Adam Lang wrote:
> Hmm, good idea, but unfortunately that won't work for me either.  The server
> has two hot swap RAID 1 drives.  To add anything else, it will require
> external storage.
> 
> Basically I am just looking for a temporary fix until later down the road
> when I go with more storage.  The couple gigs I would be moving into the
> root partition will suffice for a while.


-- 
Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                samuel@bcgreen.com
		   http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/
    Powerful committed communication. Transformation touching
      the jewel within each person and bringing it to light.

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Re: adjusting partitions without a reinstall

[Adam Lang]

Actually, this shouldn't work.  RAID only rebuilds at the smallest drive,
right?  so even if i hot swap, it wouldn't give me the full drive space.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Samuel" <samuel@bcgreen.com>
To: "Adam Lang" <aalang@rutgersinsurance.com>; "linux-newbie"
<linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: adjusting partitions without a reinstall


> FOr changing partitions, parted would be the way to go.
>
> On the other hand, since you're running RAID 1, you should be able to
> swap one drive for a larger one, rebuild the mirror, then swap the second
> drive and rebuild again.
> After swapping out the boot drive, you may have to re-install
grub/lilo/whatever.
>
> If you can hot-swap your drives, this should be seamless for the users.
> If you have to poweroff between boots, then you'll run into a problem with
> grub not being installed on your primary drive after boot.
>
> This would require that you boot with an emergency disk and re-installing
> grub. (you'll need a version of grub.conf that says to find the boot
partition
> on the secondary drive).  Once the system is up, then you can rebuild the
> mirror again. (or you can do it from the emergency boot system)
>
> Adam Lang wrote:
> > Hmm, good idea, but unfortunately that won't work for me either.  The
server
> > has two hot swap RAID 1 drives.  To add anything else, it will require
> > external storage.
> >
> > Basically I am just looking for a temporary fix until later down the
road
> > when I go with more storage.  The couple gigs I would be moving into the
> > root partition will suffice for a while.
>
>
> -- 
> Stephen Samuel +1(604)876-0426                samuel@bcgreen.com
>    http://www.bcgreen.com/~samuel/
>     Powerful committed communication. Transformation touching
>       the jewel within each person and bringing it to light.
>