Guest quakey Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 Hi, I have 2 hard drives on my sytem. When I installed Mandrake Linux, I allocated around 2.8gb and 125mb for swap. The rest of hardrive was formatted to fat32 for windows usage. The partition of the hard drive looked like this : ----------------------------------------------------------------- | Fat32 | linux swap | linux ext3| ------------------------------------------------------------------ Recently I found that I needed more space for my linux so I decided to use Partitin Magic to do increase the size of ext3 partition. First I shrank the fat32 parition and then moved the swap parition forward toward the front, so it looks like this now: ----------------------------------------------------------------- | Fat32 | linux swap | New space| linux ext3| ------------------------------------------------------------------ So now there is an unallocated space between the swap and ext3. I figured I could just switch the new space and linux ext3 and then just merge them so it would be: ----------------------------------------------------------------- | Fat32 | linux swap | linux ext3 | ------------------------------------------------------------------ It turned out that I couldn't do it. Partition Magic doesn't support ext3. So I am stuck now and it's not looking good. The only solutions I can think of are: 1) Convert ext3 back to ext2. But how to do that? And how safe it is without losing data?? 2) Reinstall linux...(i dunn wanna..) Please someone help me? Any other solutions? If not, at least teach me how to convert ext3 back to ext2. Thank you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aru Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 1) Convert ext3 back to ext2. But how to do that? And how safe it is without losing data?? There is no problem at all moving from ext3 to ext2, the former is just the later plus some journaling features. Search on how to move from ext3 to ext2 (I don't remember if there was a command or was enough to assume ext2) 2) Reinstall linux...(i dunn wanna..) That's the last thing to do, even after loosing any hope there is always a way to rescue linux ;) Any other solutions? If not, at least teach me how to convert ext3 back to ext2. Thank you! Search in this board about resizing partitions, we've discussed this problem several times before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derxen Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 See this discussion: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php...t=ext3+resiz%2A Apparently resizing an ext3 partition is very risky. I've tried with diskdrake, but it won't do it at all. What you can do is use the space for creating new partitions, say for /usr, /var, /tmp derxen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 For what it's worth, you should aim to use Reiser FS over any other filesystem. Also, if you can get to diskdrake, then you could use it to sort your partitions out. Using Mandrake? Considered running an upgrade over your current install? Quick, easy and you won't lose anything. It's a very n00bie fix, but it works. Mandrake Upgrade gets a lot of bad press, which it deserves, but it's fine so long as you don't try upgrading to a newer release (i.e. 9.0 -> 9.1). Remember that when you resize a Journalised FS, you ALWAYS lose data. Resizing a FAT32 part. is safe enough though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest quakey Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 Hmmm...I was messing around with diskdrake, and I found out that if I created a new partition, it gives me the option to specify the mount point. I selected /home, then it prompted me saying that /home already existed and asked me if I would like to move the files to new partition. I got an idea from this. If I specified the mount point to be / (root), doesn't it basically solve my problem? I mean I could create a new parition with bigger size and then just use DiskDrake to move the whole old linux partition to the new one and in a sense, I just "increased" the size of my linux partition? Would that work?? I haven't tried cuz I don't want to messup. Thank you. See this discussion: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/viewtopic.php...t=ext3+resiz%2A Apparently resizing an ext3 partition is very risky. I've tried with diskdrake, but it won't do it at all. What you can do is use the space for creating new partitions, say for /usr, /var, /tmp derxen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derxen Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 I can't say whether it would work or not. The message from diskdrake seems to imply it's no problem, but it might still get confused by the fact that the old and new partition have the same name. Someone with more detailed knowledge of partitioning should comment on that. In any case, if you can you should definitely make a back up, at least of the data/settings/etc most important to you. And it is still a good idea to split the root partition and create a /usr partition and perhaps more. derxen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derxen Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 If I specified the mount point to be / (root), doesn't it basically solve my problem? I mean I could create a new parition with bigger size and then just use DiskDrake to move the whole old linux partition to the new one and in a sense, I just "increased" the size of my linux partition? Also, you would still be left with an empty space, though smaller. derxen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted August 18, 2003 Report Share Posted August 18, 2003 I'm not sure exactly what you are asking, here is my recommended setup and a short explanation, it is, as far as my use is concerned, perfect: [ /swap ][ / ][ /usr ][ /var ][ /home ][ /media ] swap - at the beginning of drive = fastest (mostly) -250MB-. / - root partition, you should understand that one -300MB-. usr - all your program files.-10GB- home - once again, should know that -10GB-. media - my own invention, keep all my music, videos, pics in there -15GB-. File system is ReiserFS all around except for swap (of course). You could have an /etc partition, I don't find the need for one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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