Hi, im using fedora core 6, I also have windows XP on my hard disk (40 GB) and have kept 8-9 GB for linux. Now :

>my root partition is an ext3, with 4.9 GB, out of which im left with just 160 MB free

>but my /home partition which is ext3 as well is 3 GB with 2.1 GB free.
>and 512 MB swap, I have a 256 MB RAM

Can i re-partition so that 1GB from /home is allocated to / without formatting either of the partiton, if so how?
Before that, will my system respond any faster if i free up space in root partiton?

I could have just installed fedora without sperate partiton for /home, but thought it would help if i wanted to change the distro..... without formatting the whole thing.

"will my system respond any faster if i free up space in root partiton?"

No.

"Can i re-partition so that 1GB from /home is allocated to / "

You can if the 2 partitions are side by side. If they are on different areas of the disk then space cannot be shifted from one to the other.

"Can i re-partition so that 1GB from /home is allocated to / without formatting either of the partiton,"

Probably not. You can add space to the end of a partition and then format the extra space to add it to the existing file system. I don't think that you can add space to the beginning of a partition without formatting the partition.

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Steve Stites

Thanx for the reply,
if freeing up space doesn't make any difference in how my system responds, then i guess i don't need to worry about anything, however there are some applications that i don't use, i'll remove them for freeing up space.

If you use Gparted, you can actually drag a partition to the right or left. Not all file systems are supported, however.

It is possible if the home partition is after the / partition and you formatted ext2 or ext3. I use booitng as my partitioning tool, maybe jay73 can assist with gparted.

What I would do is back up data in /home, and:

1:
In KDE, open kinfocenter and go to "partitions", notice the size of your home partition, un-mount it with command #umount /home, from a terminal issue command: #resize2fs /dev/hda3 xxxxx, replace the xxxxx with the size you want to reduce it to, not the size you want to reduce it by, and replace /dev/hda3 with what your /home partition device is, wait for the prompt to come back.

2:
Then I would re-boot the computer with a bootitng disc in the drive and click "Cancel" to avoid installing it and click on "partition work" icon and highlight the home partition on "HD0" if it is on the first drive, click on "resize", bootitng will tell you how you need to use resize2fs which you already did, click "OK", it will do a file system check and present you with a maximum and minimum size, put in the minimum size and click "Ok".

2:
When it says it is complete, click "OK", highlight your / partition and click on "resize", again it will tell you to use resize2fs, click "OK", you will be presented with a maximum and minimum again, put in the maximum size and click "Ok", when it says it completed click "OK" and then "close", pull out the bootitng disk and re-boot by hitting the power button or clicking "reboot" icon.

3:
From a terminal in Linux issue this command: #resize2fs /dev/hda2, replace /dev/hda2 with the appropriate device for your root partition, you do not need to specify a size, resize2fs will expand the file system to take up the extra space in the partition.

EDIT: Because resize utilities remove from the end and not the start of a partition when shrinking it, you will need to slide the /home partition by clicking on "slide" when it is highlighted in partition work window. Put the free space before it to give the free space for the / partition expansion. Some distributions have issues when the start of a partition is moved, Fedora should not have a problem, but if it does, slide /home back to where it was. You should boot up Fedora first to verify before expanding the root partition to save some time if you have to reverse.

If you only have Gnome, there should be an info center to show the partition sizes. If you want to use bootitng, download it and unpack it, and make a floppy or CD by hitting the "bootitng.exe" in Windows and follow instructions in the dos window that appears. It is not very big and it is free to use when not installed, just make sure to hit "Cancel" at the first window that appears to avoid installing it as a boot manager. And use at your own risk, but these are the steps I take. And read "man resize2fs" to get the facts.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

sharathg786

If you haven't tried the resizing of your partitions yet, you may want to go ahead now.
I found a computer at the recycle depot with a 10GB hard drive and Windows XP Pro on it, I've been testing all kinds of stuff with it before re-building XP and giving it away. I decided to add a second 6GB drive on it (ATA), and installed Mandrake 10.2 as a dual boot. I only created 2 partitions with Mandrake partitioner, a root partition and a swap to take up the whole whopping 6GB.
I had Gparted laying around for quite some time, but never used it. So I figured I'd do a test run of your situation, I used gparted to shrink the swap partition while keeping it at the far end of the drive, then I shrunk the root partition towards the front and created a /home partition in between the two. Then I booted up Mandrake and moved all user stuff into the new partition and removed the old home directory and re-named the new partition /home and put an entry in /etc/fstab. Re-booted to see if successful and it was. Then I re-booted with gparted and shrunk /home and enlarged the root partition and re-booted. Everything was well, Gparted is very easy to use compared to my boot manager in resizing the partitions I had. Rumor has it that it is dangerous to move the beginning of a partition, I don't think it is because I regularly put images of my root partitions anywhere on the drive and just moved the beginning of /home without problems. My root partition is ext2, but gparted saw it as ext3, the new home partition I created, was formatted with gparted in ext3.