[Techtalk] Resizing A Partition?

[Rasjid Wilcox]

> > On Saturday 22 November 2003 16:31, Raquel Rice wrote:
> > > I need to resize the /usr partition on an existing installation.
> > > What is the best way to do that with the minimum damage?

> Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw at openminddev.net> wrote:
> > Other options depend a bit on your disk layout and/or whether you
> > have any empty (non-partitioned) disk space.  In which case the
> > output of df would be useful, and possibly fdisk.

On Sunday 23 November 2003 07:29, Raquel Rice wrote:
> This was one thing I failed to mention.  The hard disk is 80 GB,
> with about 70 GB non-partitioned.

Well, that changes things somewhat!

You have plenty of scope to make pretty much whatever changes you want in a 
completely reversible fashion.

There are basically two choices, depending on what you want to do with the 
space used by the current /usr partition.

1.  Create a new /usr partition, and allocate the space from the old /usr 
partition to the one immediately preceeding it (or just leave that 
unallocated).

2.  Create several new partitions for your existing data (exact ones depend on 
your current partition structure) and move them.  Remove old partitions and 
create with desired sizes.  Move the data back again.

The latter is a bit harder than the former, and is probably not worth the 
effort unless you have a particular reason for wanting that.

Although not quite your situation, I would suggest reading the 'Hard Disk 
Upgrade Mini How-to'. Many of the steps are similar. (It is normally at 
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hard-Disk-Upgrade/, but tldp.org seems to be having 
DNS problems - try http://linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/mini/Hard-Disk-Upgrade/ 
instead or one of the many other mirrors).

Post back if this is unclear, preferably with output of fdisk and either df or 
fstab.

Cheers,

Rasjid.

-- 
Rasjid Wilcox
Canberra, Australia (UTC +10 hrs)
http://www.openminddev.net