[SOLVED] /boot partition too small

Eeel · 11-20-2021, 05:48 AM

Hello,

I am using Slackware -current and have a /boot partition of 100M, now i realise this partition is a bit small and want to gain space to have the choice to boot two Kernel in lilo.

I removed the huge Kernel package.

I'm using lilo and an initrd with the generic Kernel 5.4.84 but now want to have a second initrd for the 5.15.2 Kernel.

Can i safely delete the initrd-tree to gain space and continue to boot the 5.4.84 initrd ?

I also notice there is a grub folder of ~10M in the /boot folder, can i delete this folder ? Removing grub with pkgtool did not removed this folder.

A final note, my setup is in raid with three drive, and i have ~1G of free space on every drive, but i don't know if it's possible, and a good idea, to try to make this /boot partition bigger, sounds risky to me.

Thom1b · 11-20-2021, 06:49 AM

Hi, I suggest you to use a different path for your initrd-tree. You can delete /boot/initrd-tree safely.
If you don't use grub, you can also delete /boot/grub.

vonbiber · 11-20-2021, 09:53 AM

you could also try to use gparted to move/resize your partitions.
From the manual

Quote:

The gparted application enables you to change the partition organization
on a disk device while preserving the contents of the partition.

Eeel · 11-20-2021, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom1b

Hi, I suggest you to use a different path for your initrd-tree. You can delete /boot/initrd-tree safely.
If you don't use grub, you can also delete /boot/grub.

Thank you Thom1b, relocating the initrd-tree is obvious but did not think about it

Quote:

Originally Posted by vonbiber

you could also try to use gparted to move/resize your partitions.
From the manual

I will investigate this carefully, thank you

Gordie · 11-20-2021, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vonbiber

you could also try to use gparted to move/resize your partitions.
From the manual

I have used gparted to resize partitions and had only success. You could try it and see.
Remember to backup and you can try with confidence

Tonus · 11-21-2021, 07:22 AM

For gparted, since my boot partition was at the begining of the disk, I rather created a new boot partition at end of disk : less things to move.

Eeel · 11-21-2021, 08:55 AM

thank you for all your feedbacks.

my /boot partition is also at the beginning, but my setup is in raid with three drives as described here in an old thread

Actually with 100M, the trick to move the inird-tree and the grub folder deleted i was able to install a second kernel.

About the grub folder by the way, i ran an update yesterday and folder came back, grub-2.06 was not in the updated packages, but an empty /boot folder exist in this package, and now have deleted it again so can't investigate further.

Didier Spaier · 11-21-2021, 09:01 AM

But in a very few cases there is no need for a separate /boot partition anyway...