Making room for more partitions, was: Re: [Techtalk] RH9: pah. Gentoo?

[EevaJärvinen]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 11:45:06AM -0700, Conni wrote:
> 
> (BTB, I really hope I don't have to reformat my laptop, because there's
> currently no connectivity and I can't get anything off.)

I came up with an idea.  (I'm going to bed; the idea just popped into
my head)  So this is not like an ideal explanation, but I hope you can
get the gist of it:

Requirements: enough free disk space for a, say 3GB partition.

Idea:

1) use resize2fs to reduce the root filesystem's size so it is 3GB (or
more) smaller than your hd.  You have to do this from a rescue disk,
because AFAIK you can't resize a `live' partition.  Ditto for step 2.

2) use fdisk to reduce the size of your root partition to this new
size.

3) create a new, empty partition into the new empty space; install
the os of your choice into that.

4) remove all unnecessary stuff from the old root partition, likely
everything but /home, leave /etc hanging for a while, too.  (but do
NOT just copy configuration files over from older versions, you may
get strange, hard-to-debug problems)

I've heard that Knoppix can boot most anything, you might want to try
that for rescuing.

Off to sleep, for now. HTH.


Eeva

-- 
...women are not obedient, chaste, scented, and exquisitely apparelled by
nature.  They can only attain these graces, without which they may enjoy 
none of the delights of life, by the most tedious discipline.

                                                  V. Woolf, Orlando