Aomighty Posted August 23, 2005 Report Share Posted August 23, 2005 Ok, so here' s my problem. Recently I switched to Debian from Mandrake (I have nothing against Mandrake lol, just wanted to try another distro). Anway, I'm running out of space on my Debian partition, so I deleted my Mandrake partition to give me more room for Debian. The df command now gives this output: In order, it goes Windows (sda1), swap (sda5), Debian (sda6). Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda6 15741824 14059444 1362568 92% / tmpfs 257508 0 257508 0% /dev/shm /dev/sda1 20514968 16808852 3706116 82% /mnt/windows Since the Debian partition starts AFTER the free space, when I attempt to resize it with Mandrake CD 1, it won't let me resize. So the question is, how can I make the Debian partition (sda6) start at a different sector so it can resize? Thanks. [moved from Hardware by spinynorman] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted August 23, 2005 Report Share Posted August 23, 2005 Before you start any repartitioning: Have you freed up some space already, emptying e.g. your apt-get cache? I would examine the system in detail and use repartitioning only as a last, desperate measure. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aomighty Posted August 23, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 23, 2005 Cleaned the cache, and for the moment I'm okay, but I'd still like to repartition, as Debian as 15GB allocated and I have about 45GB free space :). Could I make an ext3 partition of, say 16GB (just enough to hold it) and copy the entire Debian system onto it, then resize to 45GB? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aomighty Posted August 24, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 Well, while I was messing around, I accidentally did an rm -rf / through Knoppix (forgot to chroot first, just trying to delete a different partition), and, though my /home directory is still intact, I lost my /var and /etc directory. I guess I'll be reinstalling now... :(. This sucks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted August 24, 2005 Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 Of course if you did not create separate real partitions for /var or /etc then if you lose (NOT loose, as so many spell it) / then of course you will lose those two, but what the heck would you want to make such real partitions for them anyhow. In 3yrs of following this particular subject, I have never found a single compelling argument in favour of it. I hope you had important data backed up and if not then "naughty, naughty, naughty". :D Anyway, doing a reinstall is no big deal and it cleans out a lot of stuff for you. Good luck with your efforts. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted August 24, 2005 Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 Well, while I was messing around, I accidentally did an rm -rf / through Knoppix (forgot to chroot first, just trying to delete a different partition), and, though my /home directory is still intact, I lost my /var and /etc directory. I guess I'll be reinstalling now... :(. This sucks. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> :lol: Say, couldn't you wait a bit until I finished sleeping in order to help you? :D Well, you "sorta" solved that one by yourself. I wish you better luck next time. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted August 24, 2005 Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 For the record, some partition managers can move a partition "up" and "down" the unused HD space, but AFAIK all the usable ones are commercial. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted August 24, 2005 Report Share Posted August 24, 2005 AussieJohn, a lot of people use a separate /var partition on servers. The /var log files can really fill up on a server fast, depending on the traffic. Keeping it on a separate partition keeps /var from consuming too much space on /. At least, that's the main rationale I've heard. This should not be a concern for a desktop install, however. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted August 25, 2005 Report Share Posted August 25, 2005 It is the desktop only that I am concerned with since I do not use servers and I would presume that most computer don't either but I do not question what you say regarding server use. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aomighty Posted August 25, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 25, 2005 Yeah, I had stuff backed up, so I was ok. It fixed that wierd xdm problem I'd been having lol. Actually, my plan with copying would have worked quite fine, if it weren't for the misstyped command. I forgot to type rm -rf /mnt/sda5 and instead typed rm -rf / :). Also, if I had mounted the partition readonly I would have been fine too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted August 25, 2005 Report Share Posted August 25, 2005 (edited) I don't use a separate /var myself, but it does make sense, even for desktops, since the package updates are cached there. For bleeding edge distro users, these updates can be a few gigabytes fat! Edited August 25, 2005 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted August 27, 2005 Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 I don't use a separate /var myself, but it does make sense, even for desktops, since the package updates are cached there. For bleeding edge distro users, these updates can be a few gigabytes fat! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm one of those bleeding edge seperate /var using fellows :) I"ve also been using lvm for about 3-4 years now too so I can resize them when I want :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aomighty Posted August 27, 2005 Author Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 lvm? What's that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted August 27, 2005 Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 LVM is the logical Volume Manager, used by RedHat and Fedora. Here you can find more information about it: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/ excerpt: Logical volume management provides a higher-level view of the disk storage on a computer system than the traditional view of disks and partitions. This gives the system administrator much more flexibility in allocating storage to applications and users. Storage volumes created under the control of the logical volume manager can be resized and moved around almost at will, although this may need some upgrading of file system tools. The logical volume manager also allows management of storage volumes in user-defined groups, allowing the system administrator to deal with sensibly named volume groups such as "development" and "sales" rather than physical disk names such as "sda" and "sdb". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted August 27, 2005 Report Share Posted August 27, 2005 Most distros support LVM now, but Fedora/Redhat implement online reszie on ext3 file systems so it makes it a breeze to resize on the fly (even while data is being writen, I've tested it :) ) the code for ext3online was put into kernel proper recently, (i believe). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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