Resizing Partition / Tar-ing Linux

Kenji Miyamoto · 08-21-2005, 02:20 AM

I wish to change the size of a ReiserFS partition, not necessarily while the OS is active on the partition. I've been advised that archiving everything into a tar file, copying it to another, and then putting it back on there after the modifications.

I've used the command tar -cjfp / /gentoo.tar.bz2, and have excluded /proc. Are there any other things I should do before swithing to another OS to resize?

If this isn't the best way to perform the partition resizing, what is?

PenguinPwrdBox · 08-21-2005, 07:47 PM

Have you heard of qtparted?
It's a GUI version of parted. It may be able to resize it, although I'm not sure if it will do reiserfs (it does NTFS - so i would think so!

If this is a regular problem for you, or you anticipate that it might be, you should consider using LVM for your disks. This will allow you to resize your volumes and disks on the fly from the command line.

Kenji Miyamoto · 08-22-2005, 12:12 AM

Does anyone know if the Parted version that comes with Debian 3.1 supports resizing ReiserFS?

Kenji Miyamoto · 08-22-2005, 07:58 PM

I used Parted to resize it, and now Gentoo can't mount its main filesystem. How do I fix it?

EDIT: Also, Parted had a segmentation fault when attempting to resize it.

PenguinPwrdBox · 08-22-2005, 09:41 PM

Boot the live CD, and fsck that drive.

Kenji Miyamoto · 08-22-2005, 10:22 PM

Okay, a reiserfsck --rebuild-tree deleted my inittab. Now how will I boot Gentoo?

PenguinPwrdBox · 08-22-2005, 11:23 PM

Boot live CD
Mount root drive.
Copy inittab to /etc/
Or, use this one:
Edit it accordingly :)

Code:

#
# inittab       This file describes how the INIT process should set up
#               the system in a certain run-level.
#
# Author:       Miquel van Smoorenburg, <miquels@drinkel.nl.mugnet.org>
#               Modified for RHS Linux by Marc Ewing and Donnie Barnes
#

# Default runlevel. The runlevels used by RHS are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 
id:5:initdefault:

# System initialization.
si::sysinit:/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

l0:0:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 0
l1:1:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 1
l2:2:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 2
l3:3:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 3
l4:4:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 4
l5:5:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 5
l6:6:wait:/etc/rc.d/rc 6

# Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now

# When our UPS tells us power has failed, assume we have a few minutes
# of power left.  Schedule a shutdown for 2 minutes from now.
# This does, of course, assume you have powerd installed and your
# UPS connected and working correctly.  
pf::powerfail:/sbin/shutdown -f -h +2 "Power Failure; System Shutting Down"

# If power was restored before the shutdown kicked in, cancel it.
pr:12345:powerokwait:/sbin/shutdown -c "Power Restored; Shutdown Cancelled"


# Run gettys in standard runlevels
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

# Run xdm in runlevel 5
x:5:once:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon

Kenji Miyamoto · 08-23-2005, 04:29 PM

I decided to go for a compete reinstall. Some other important programs may have been corrupt and missing, and I don't mind reinstalling.