Hullo All,
I tried upgrading my F8 to F9 (x86_64 on DVD) and after quite a while was told that I needed more disc space, the 190MB size of the partition wasn't enough.
This is all a tad odd as I had thought that F8 was installed on a partition of about 8 GB
The output from df -h is...
Gparted doesn't show the LVM part so I'm not sure what is what here.
Are there better tools than Gparted to actually see which part is which and what includes who?
And, is it possible, using Gparted or other tools, to resize /dev/sda1 without breaking anything, to provide enough space to the upgrade?

Cheers,
Terry

Check if you have old kernels in /boot that you don't need. An upgrade will install a new kernel and initrd file in /boot.
Also make sure you aren't doing anything unexpected like trying to do a fresh install onto the /boot partition.

Look at what is in /boot now, because the amount of space your du command is showing should be plenty. There may be something else going on that you don't want to do.

However 8 GB is not a lot of space. That is what probably needs increasing. You may need to reduce the size of the /dev/sda2 partition and add the space freed up to the lvm volume.

The /usr partiton will grow in size because that is where the packages you install later will end up. Checking my laptop, just now, mine is over 7 GB. You have just 8 GB for /usr and the rest of the system directories.

it looks like you are trying to install/update fedora9 into the fedora 8 boot partition .
Upgrade is still experimental and may not work . Doing a fresh install is the preferred way .
also did you select "install in free space " ( hence the 190 meg.) .Use " replace existing linux partitions" instead or "use custom partitions" and make one for /,/home,/boot,swap( -- not using LVM)
and BACK UP YOUR DATA TO DVD first

It's all a bit inscrutable.
/boot only has about 14MB.
Yes, it would be good to be able to reduce the size of /dev/sda2 to free up some space, and my question was really asking how one can do that without losing things that one doesn't want to lose, but I am now looking at another approach...see below.
In response to john VV, the F9 loader found my F8 installation and I simply asked it to do an upgrade. I didn't specify anything fancy, simply let it make default decisions.
I have now realised that I have a spare 160GB IDE drive in my old box, and thought that the best approach would be to install that as a second drive, make a copy of everything, then do a fresh install of F9, but have come a bit unstuck with reformatting/partioning the second drive. One problem leads to another :-(
I thought I might set it up with a single partition. It is now as follows;

[root@phenom terry]# fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00049df5

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 25 200781 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 26 17872 143356027+ 83 Linux

I can't get gparted to do anything with it, it always fails with an error, usually 'could not stat device'.
I guess I could use the disk as-is, but that doesn't help me understand how to do these things when I really need to.
How does one reformat/repartition a disk?
Is gparted broken?
I am using 0.3.3-13.fc8 which appears to be the latest version distributed for F8.

Cheers,
Terry

you can keep looking around about doing an upgrade from fedora 8 ( 64 or 32 bit) to fedora 9 -64 bit
if 8 is 32 bit -- forget about it and do a fresh install.
also be warned a upgrade from 8 to 9 may only work less than 50% of the time .At the best you might only have 1 or 2 small -- easily corrected -- problems and at worst a computer that may not boot.

so EVEN before trying to do an upgrade
BACK UP YOUR DATA
----
Gparted will see a "logical volume Manager" partition ( LVM) BUT ONLY the very,very,very new one on there web site will do that .so dl the new one and burn it to disk( bootable disk)

OK, thanks for that advice.
I decided to use the second disc as-is, and saved all my user data to that as well as important stuff to DVD, then did a fresh install.
It all went OK, i.e. no dramas during the install, but I have been left with a system that doesn't automatically connect to the network when booted.
Not sure what is going on, and I may need to start a new thread on the subject.
Most of the time the eth0 is activated (or so it says), but I can only make a connection to outside world if I deactivate it then activate it again, then all seems well for the rest of the session.
I also had a situation where Opera was talking happily but the add/remove software tool said it didn't have a network connection. that was fixed by turning off the network manager applet.
Like they say, life wasn't meant to easy...but it's not too bad, at least I can get it going, so it all quite usable and hopefully I will have a solution soon.
Other than that F9 looks quite good.

Cheers,
Terry

with fedora 9 the default network services is " Network Manager" ( on by default) .
In Fedora 8 it was "Network ( on by default , with " Network Manager" OFF by default )
did you read the doc's and release notes
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/
and about " NetworkManager"
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/F...guration_files
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/
if you use a wireless leave NetworkManager running.
if on a cable or dsl then turn off NetworkManager and turn on Network in the services.
PS. the services GUI has changed too .

I'm using a wired network, and now have NetworkManager off and Network on in services, and all is now working as expected.
Thanks for your advice.

Cheers,
Terry