Repartition question

satimis · 10-06-2004, 11:18 AM

Hi folks,

I'm prepared to test LFS on a FedoraCore2 box with following partitions existing

# df -Th

Code:

Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hde2     ext3    5.6G  3.3G  2.1G  61% /
/dev/hde1     ext3    105M  7.6M   92M   8% /boot
none         tmpfs    189M     0  189M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hde5     ext3    3.2G  388M  2.7G  13% /home

I am going to repartition /dev/hde5 creating new partitions of about 1.5G in total for LFS, such as
/boot
/root
/swap
etc/

/dev/hde5 is now used as /home.

Kindly advise where can I find relevant instruction/manual for this work avoiding damaging /home which already holds files

TIA

B.R.
satimis

Andrew Benton · 10-06-2004, 05:51 PM

Login as root so that you're not using the /home folder at all then make a tar.bz2 archive of your home folder, unmount it then use cfdisk to delete hde5 and use the free space to create the new partitions you want. Don't forget to write the changes to disk.

cd /
tar cjf home.tar.bz2 home
umount /dev/hde5
cfdisk

Then edit /etc/fstab and comment out the line that mounts /dev/hde5 on /home then reboot. Login as root again and reformat /dev/hde5

mkfs.ext3 /dev/hde5

Edit /etc/fstab so that it's back the way it was and then remount /dev/hde5 and untar the archive you made earlier

mount -a
tar xjfp home.tar.bz2

satimis · 10-06-2004, 10:55 PM

Hi Andrew,

Tks for your advice.

Quote:

cd /
tar cjf home.tar.bz2 home
umount /dev/hde5
cfdisk

I havn't installed cfdisk so I'll use fdisk instead.

Here I'm not very experienced on creating Ext partitions. Usually I create 4 partitions, max.

Shall I run
# fdisk /dev/hde5 ???

/dev/hde5 is /home partition of FC2
Then what shall be the next step

Quote:

Then edit /etc/fstab and comment out the line that mounts /dev/hde5 on /home then reboot. Login as root again and reformat /dev/hde5

mkfs.ext3 /dev/hde5

Here I'm not very clear. After repartition there are 9partitions, say;

/boot
/root
/swap
/home

The above partitions are for FC2. What about other partitions just created, say

hde6 (suppose for LFS /boot)
hde7 (suppose for LFS /root)
hde8 (suppose for LFS /swap)
hde9 (suppose for LFS /home

OR just ONE partition for all of them. Shall I create FS for it/all of them (format)?

Quote:

[b]Edit /etc/fstab so that it's back the way it was and then remount /dev/hde5 /B]

What about LFS /home ???

TIA

B.R.
satimis

Andrew Benton · 10-07-2004, 07:33 AM

For partition schemes you can more or less do what you want and be creative. If you're not sure, keep it simple and just have one root partition / with everything (/boot, /home, /usr, /etc) on that. I once tried having /usr on a separate partition and got into trouble as it filled up and I couldn't install any more software. I don't see anything to be gained by having /home on a separate partition but that's just my opinion. I have my email on a separate partition which I mount at /home/andy/.thunderbird so that if I reboot into another version or reinstall LFS I've still got all my messages there the first time I run Thunderbird.
So that's my advice. Keep it simple and then elaborate in a way that suits you. I hope other people chip in with their opinions

satimis · 10-07-2004, 09:21 AM

Hi Andrew,

Tks for your further advice.

I'll keep one partition for LFS. Since this box is for testing, I'm trying to collect more inforamtion and/or other ways of doing for building up my knowledge.

Tks.

B.R.
satimis

Cerbere · 10-07-2004, 03:23 PM

Just to add to what Andrew said, if you already have a swap partition, then you don't need to create another. You can use the same swap partition for two different installs, since only one will be running at a time.

Enjoy!
--- Cerbere