Help with enlarging my partiton

hongman · 02-28-2005, 01:01 PM

Hello all

I have got a 15GB system partition, but I have just freed up an extra 60GB of space on that disk...hence I would like to make my system partition bigger.

In QTParted, the free space shows as Hidden. It wont let me do a simple 'resize'.

I thought about running Live off the CD, but then I have an extra problem...it alays tells me everything is read only! I have tried chmod, also unmounting but it says the 'device is busy'...

So whats the best way to do this? Thanks in advance

Hong

Matir · 02-28-2005, 01:28 PM

Resizing filesystems while they are in use is either impossible or dangerous, depending on the mount point. Running parted from a livecd is, I believe, the standard mechanism for partition resizing.

hongman · 02-28-2005, 01:48 PM

Thanks.

So I need to do this from LiveCD, which I had guess as much.

How do i unmount the partition and remount it with write perms? Can I do a resize or doe it have to be formatted and done from scratch (which I DO NOT want to do!)?

Thanks

Hong

Matir · 02-28-2005, 02:32 PM

You should be able to do a resize, but do NOT do it while the partition is mounted (if avoidable). If not, do it mounted read-only. I don't believe a resize requires read-write access.

If you want to remout rw, try the following:

Code:

mount -o rw,remount /dev/PARTITION /mnt/POINT

This is mainly needed for /, as in

Code:

mount -o rw,remount /dev/hda3 /

for my system.

hongman · 02-28-2005, 02:39 PM

Thanks Matir

I dont quite understand...When i boot into Live, and start QTParted, on my system part the only option I get is &Properties. No resize, or anything like that.

How would you do it?

Thanks

Hong

PS Sorry for being a pain

Matir · 02-28-2005, 02:57 PM

To be quite honest, I haven't used qtparted in a long time, but there should be a resize option... somewhere.

Which version of qtparted are you using? Does is show all the partitions?

PS. You're not a pain, you're just here to learn something.

hongman · 02-28-2005, 03:13 PM

Thanks for the support Matir. I've recently just replaced my XP box with Knoppix, and although prving to be a headache at the best of times, I am determined to make this work!!

I am using version 0.4.4 I believe. Its a pretty simple layout, and from what I can see there isnt a resize option. It does see all partitions...

What next? Thinking of it, if I booted with Acronis Parition Expert would it be harmful to give that a try?

Thanks

Hong

Matir · 02-28-2005, 03:17 PM

I'm not familiar with acronis partition expert; but I looked it up on the web. It claims support for ext3, so it should be able to handle it. Make sure all your data is backed up first, of course. (This should've been said back when this thread started, oops).

hongman · 02-28-2005, 03:27 PM

Just tried that. It says that if the drive is bootable, I have to use the linux boot floppy and boot from that, and run /sbin/lilo or something.

Rather not go down that route as I can put money down I will screw it up. Guaranteed!!

Is there another way? Surely this cant be that hard!! (obvisouly it is!)

Hong

Matir · 02-28-2005, 03:34 PM

Umm, you may need to do that after the resize. Are you using lilo or grub for your boot manager?

hongman · 02-28-2005, 05:03 PM

I'm using Lilo. How do i make a boot disk? When i installed I opted not to make one...