how to reduce the size of "/ "partition

Linish · 05-02-2014, 09:02 AM

hi,
i was looking to reduce the size of "/ " partition. Currently root partition (" / ") have 20GB. i have searched many sites no answer..

the partition which i want to resize is /dev/xvda1 pointed to "/ ".
its a live server . i'm remotely accessing it so i want to resize the partition as live.

Hope anyone will help me...
Thanks
Linish

Ser Olmy · 05-02-2014, 09:59 AM

Before you can reduce the size of the partition, you'll have to shrink the file system on that partition.

Very few file systems support hot-resizing, especially when it comes to shrinking. Which file system do you use?

mdooligan · 05-02-2014, 10:27 AM

Farm out /usr, /var, /home, /opt, and /tmp to other partitions. It sounds like you have everything on one big partition.

Code:

[root@timberwolf miven]# df
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part5
                      780M  263M  479M  36% /
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part9
                      5.4G  4.0G  1.4G  76% /home
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part10
                      981M   17M  915M   2% /tmp
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part7
                      3.9G  2.8G  894M  77% /usr
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part8
                      5.4G  4.4G  739M  86% /var
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2
                       17G   13G  3.0G  82% /usr/local
/dev/scsi/host1/bus0/target0/lun0/part1

That's the 40G HD on my 2005 Acer laptop. The / partition is only 780M and I've never had an issue. The /usr/local partition used to be the WinXP primary, now converted to something useful.

wstewart90 · 05-05-2014, 09:18 PM

On most file systems such as ext3 and ext4, you can't shrink the root partition on-line. Ask your hosting provider to shrink the partition for you. The web hosting company I used to work for couldn't shrink a disk at all because their cloud platform was running on hyper-v and it was a limitation in the version of hyper-v that was being used.

Shadow_7 · 05-06-2014, 12:00 AM

# du -h --max-depth=1 /

figure out what's hogging up space first. Certain things are expendable.

~/.mozilla
~/.java
~/.adobe

And probably a few other hogs. The /usr/share/doc/ can get quite girthy depending on distro. And various package updates that may still be lingering (/var/cache/apt/archives/) for the .deb files of debian updates. Failed edits to media can linger in /tmp. And other quirks.

voleg · 05-08-2014, 06:39 AM

Start rescue disk, do not mount OS.
reduce FS, then resize partition (probably gparted will work, but just remove and create smaller will work too).

MAKE BACKUP BEFORE !!!!

Another option: assign smaller disk, create new (smaller) FS on it and "rsync" content.
Then put old disk aside and use "new" one.

linosaurusroot · 05-08-2014, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdooligan

Farm out /usr, /var, /home, /opt, and /tmp to other partitions. It sounds like you have everything on one big partition.

Although I've been putting /usr on its own partition for years I've decided not to do so any more.

linosaurusroot · 05-08-2014, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow_7

figure out what's hogging up space first. Certain things are expendable.

e.g. this may remove unnecessary package data

Code:

yum clean all

http://www.linuxcommand.org/man_pages/yum8.html