From: cummings@hammer.prime.com (Kevin Cummings) Subject: Re: Extending the size of a partition? Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 19:03:29 GMT
In article <1992Dec14.021022.16565@tc.cornell.edu>, mdw@db.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh) writes:
> My /usr filesystem is on /dev/hda4, and is a Minix filesystem. I'd
> like to somehow non-destructively replace this with an extended
> filesystem so I'll have the space... currently, about 100 megs of
> my disk are sitting unused after /dev/hda4.
>
> I imagine this is impossible, but if there's any way to do this
> without destroying the files, I'd like to try it. Otherwise, I'll
> just have to tar up my entire /usr tree onto my DOS partition (which
> I only use as my Linux backup!), kill the partition, replace it, and
> then unpack the big tar file back onto the new /usr.
>
> Any ideas? If I can't replace the filesystem non-destructively,
> are there any caveats for backing up the whole thing with one
> big tar file? Thanks for any help.
You don't mention what your partition table looks like. Are you already
using 4 partitions? At least one for DOS, and at least one for Linux.
Do you currently have a swap partition? Do you have a DOS-extended
partition?
If you are only using 2 or 3 partitions, then you can create new partition
for your remaining disk space. Use efdisk to create it, and do a newfs
on it to initialize it. mount it under your current file system (/mnt),
and use the mv command to move your files to the new partition. When you
are done, you can put the appropriate mount commands in your rc.local file
and you are done!
If you are already using all 4 entries in your partition table, then you
need to do some creative re-partitioning. I sugest that you make one
of your partitions (the big one) a DOS-extended partition. Inside of the
DOS-extended partition, you can create "logical disks" for DOS and still
leave other space for LINUX partitions. You can create the LINUX equivalent
of DOS "logical disks" using efdisk (/dev/hda5, etc) and follow the suggestions
above. You may have to back stuff up to floppy or tape first in order to
reclaim it later (either under DOS or LINUX depending on your capabilities).
Finally remember that if worse comes to worse, you can always re-create the
better part of your LINUX environment from the SLS disks if necessary (again
depending their availability to you).
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Kevin J. Cummings ComputerVision Services
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I've come to the conclusion that your new
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