Resize Reiser Partition

GnaM · 12-31-2004, 04:12 AM

Hi,

Problem
I want to resize my Reiser partition, preferably without a loss of data.

How did I got into trouble ?
When I first installed Linux, I did it with the realization that ALL of my precious data on my HD would be lost, since I thought Linux to format my fat32 prior to installing the SuSe 9.2 distribution on it.
To my utter amazement, this was not the case. Linux was apparently advanced enough to partition my HD with a Reiser partition for Linux.
Though, Because I thought my HD would get formatted ANYWAY, I did not delete any
useless files on my HD. Because I only had about 2 GB left on my HD as free space,
Linux took it for it's Reiser partition.
Now I can barely download files without it being a brainteaser...
I can't install the full SuSe 9.2 package (like Gnome etc) because of lack of space on this partition.

What do I wish to accomplish ?
I would like my Reiser partition to become tremendous huge by taking away useless space occupied by windows.

What prevents me from using programs like parted ?
The problem is that I can't boot with floppy, and all of those programs require
this.

And what about reinstalling it ?
I tried that also, but it comes with advanced expert options, you touch one and it goes like ARE YOU REALLY CERTAIN ? as to scare me to death that it might entail an implosion of my monitor or some bizarre feature to that extent.
I am not certain if I read correctly, but somehow you can't change the size of your reiser partition that way. I can change the FAT32, but cannot use this space to feed my hungry Reiser.

What do I consider to be good solutions ?
No reboot from floppy.
loss of data if no other way possible.
Reinstall of SuSe 9.2

Regards.

shmonkey · 12-31-2004, 04:54 AM

If you boot from a live CD that has Qparted on you should be able to resize your partition OK.

I think the safest way would be rather than resize the partition create a new one, this could then be mounted as say /home.

This way you do not risk losing your data.

Regards

Shmonkey

bigjohn · 12-31-2004, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Now reiserfs is a database and has to be shrunk using a special tool:

resize_reiserfs

So to reduce a partition by 30G, you would:

~# df /home
~# umount /home
~# resize_reiserfs -s -30G /dev/hda6
~# mount /dev/hda6
~# df /home

You should then see the partition shrink by 30GB. Once you have shrunk the
partition, you can delete it with fdisk and recreate it 30GB smaller (be
careful not to make the partition smaller than the size you have reduced
the filesystem by) and then make the /vfat partition.

Once you have done that, you will need to edit your fstab to include the
/vfat partition, and you need to mkfs.msdos (or mkfs.vfat - its the same
program really, explicitly declaring you want FAT32, or it will give you
FAT16):

~# mkfs.msdos -F 32 /dev/hda7

> I was hoping that I'd just be able to take 20 to 30 gig's off the end of
> the /home partition (which is a not inconsiderable 70 gig's in size) and
> then format the space as fat32 - Would this do the trick do you think -
> I know that this would position the fat32/vfat partition at the very end
> of the disc, but I shouldn't think that I'd need too worry about disc
> access speeds, I'm only considering this for my mp3's so it's not
> exactly what you'd call mission critical!

With any luck, with the partition resize, you shouldn't lose data.

Above is the text of an email that I got from one of the blokes at my LUG about resizing reiser partitions.

To start with, I'm using gentoo, and when I installed I also installed the reiserfs tools (reiserfsprogs), I suspect that the reiser_resize facility is in that package.

so whether you have it available, I don't know?

What I'm actually trying to do, is take space from my /home, make it a different partition, formatted as FAT32 and put all my mp3's in it, so they're available from windows as well as linux.

I thought it would be easy as I've got a copy of partition magic 8 in my windows install, and it was only when I couldn't just use that to resize my logical reiserfs formatted /home that I found out that not all linux HDD formats/filesystems are as easily manipulated as ext2 or 3.

I have got some other info about this, well about how I'm going to have to accomplish this, but I've got to wait as I foolishly decided to emerge sync/emerge -upD world/emerge -uD world when I got in from work @ stupid oclock this morning, and if you know anything about how long it can take to compile things in gentoo, then you'll understand that I've got to wait untill the latest KDE (3.3.2) has finished updating/upgrading.

Once that's done, I'll be actually doing the modifications that I want (the above text plus some other bits), if you emailed or pm'd me, I could always send you the link to our mail archives so you can read it all.

regards

John

Electro · 12-31-2004, 04:15 PM

To boot from a floppy. You need to change the order what drives are looked at first during the boot process. I think you have the hard drive as the first drive to look at. Set the hard drive to be the last boot device. Floppy and CD-ROM should be before the hard drives if you want to boot from a floppy or CD-ROM/DVD.

If you want near infinite amount of space, use LVM or EVMS. This means you have to copy all your data to a temporary medium (storage). Then setup LVM for the partition. Next format the LVM partition, but you have to resize_reiserfs after you add additional hard drives.

As with all disk utilities, I suggest backing up the data before attempting to do change the size of a partition, delete a partition, and add a partition.

minm · 12-31-2004, 04:33 PM

isn't there a way to resize resier partitions without data lose?

bigjohn · 12-31-2004, 07:53 PM

yeah, use the resize_reiserfs tool.

that makes the file system as small as you want it to be.

but as far as I can work out, you then still have to make the actual partition smaller.

the way that's been recommended to me is that you then back up the data, then delete the partition.

make a new smaller partition

modify fstab (if necessary)

remake the filesystem and then replace/install the data from backup.

I think that's what I'm doing, but I'm still making sure so I don't loose anything.

regards

John