Re: Why shrink but not move?
- From: BearItAll <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 16:19:06 +0000
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz wrote:
I am installing openSUSE 10.2 and the root "partition"[1] I had
reserved for it was too small. I wanted to shrink the partition prior
to and then shift and expand the root partition. However, the Yast
partitioner seems to only support "shrink"[2]. Why? Is there really
much point to being able to resize a partition if you can't move it to
consolidate free space?
I've got a copy of Partition Magic 4.0, but it's burned me in the past
and I don't trust it. Any recommendations?
[1] Really a logical drive in an extended logical partition.
[2] It can also expand.
It can't expand the partition if something else is already there, to do that
it would have to move all the other volumes, because it has to expand to
contigious sectors. Even if the new Gparted can do that (I don't know if it
can), if there is no where at the end of the drive to shift those volumes
into then nothing can move, it can't guess as to which volume to shrink in
order to make room for your expanding volume. You could have expanded if
you had used LVM (assuming space is available on the devices), but LVM
doesn't seem popular these days for some reason.
PM4 can no doubt do that sort of thing, move all the volumes I mean, but in
this case it isn't necessary anyway.
The one you are after moving is the 'root' not the 'boot' (I'm saying that
because my first read of your post I got to the end assuming the wrong one,
my fault not yours). So you can move your 'root' in exactly the same way as
you move other partitions or directories, it is nothing more than a home
directory for 'root', I don't suppose many actually make use of it for any
sort of storage or utilities, if you do you are best having a soft link to
a /home/root location to make sure you don't miss this data in a data only
backup. But really I can't think of a decent reason for keeping data in
/root other than a few little helpers for if you ever have to enter in
rescue mode.
Rename root to oldroot.
Create directory root on the volume you want it on, just as long as you keep
it at '/'.
Copy oldroot/* to root/
Edit fstab to stop the old root trying to mount, it would fail anyway, but
might pause a while at boot up (just comment it out for now)
I hated that partition magic from the first time I tried it, so for when you
do need partition utilities outside of your installed system, keep a good
Live linux handy, they is nearly always at least one on the Linux magazine
DVDs, pick the one you like best and keep it handy.
Anyway, there is more.
As I said above it can be handy to have some resue helpers in 'root', in my
case I keep a copy of fstab and mtab to remind me what is mounted where,
and a couple of text files with help notes. For that is is still best if
your root is on it's own volume, just in case the reason you are in rescue
mode is that another of the volumes can not be mounted. Your partitioner
can shrink volumes so you can seperate out some space for root, then use
fdisk to create your partition into your freed up space, format it, give it
the mount point of /root (remember to rename the other root), copy
everything into it. Then there you are.
So really what I have said is two ways to solve your problem, but I still
only require one payment, hows that for a good deal. Please pop the cheque
in the post.
.
- References:
- Why shrink but not move?
- From: Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
- Why shrink but not move?
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