[Techtalk] xfs repartitioning - solved

[James Sutherland]

On 21/10/2015 03:30, Meryll Larkin wrote:
> Okay for those of you who are curious about what would and what would not work:
>
> I could not get the command line version of gparted "parted" native to CentOS6 to cooperate with the syntax I was using.   Since no one offered me any syntax other than what I had already tried, I marked this as a "dead end".  So IF I had booted to CentOS6 DVD rescue, I have no idea where I would have gone from there.  Seems to me that unmounting (umount) the partition  on a server where I was the only one capable of logging in was roughly equivalent to booting to single user mode, etc.  Native CLI parted on CentOS6 NO GO.

Interesting - what problem did you get? Did I miss you posting error 
messages from the commands I sent for creating GPT partitions?

You'd probably have been better with the graphic version, though, 
GPartEd - see below.

> No one from this list suggested using the CentOS6 DVD any way OTHER than booting to rescue mode and since I don't know where I'd go from there:  CentOS6 DVD NO GO.

For this situation, rescue mode wouldn't gain you anything: you'd still 
be running the same software anyway.

> I found 2 other options - one - as someone on the list suggested in fairly vague terms, Logical partitions, another  which I found when researching GPARTED:  a Live GPARTED BOOT CD.
>
> I did not try the Live Gparted Boot CD - it is possible it would have worked, as it is a more recent version of Gparted than the rpm on CentOS6, plus there is a nice youtube video about how to use it.  But I didn't have remote console, and that solution would have involved a trip to the Data Center.  I tried the other option first, and that worked.

No need to visit in person: if you can SSH to a server, you can also run 
graphical applications on it, thanks to X.

(If you're on Linux or OS X, just adding "-X" to your SSH command line 
will make X applications you run appear on your local desktop via SSH 
forwarding; if you're on Windows, the free MobaXterm tool gives you a 
combined SSH and X client all in one EXE file.)

Something like: "ssh -X root at bigdiskserver.example.com gparted /dev/sdb" 
would have given you a GUI for editing the partitions.

It's good to hear you got it working OK though, well done: I hope you 
get good use out of that monster system now!


James.