I am running out of space in my sda6 partition:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 4.9G 3.7G 962M 80% /
/dev/sda3 99M 76M 18M 81% /boot
none 501M 0 501M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda5 25G 3.5G 20G 15% /usr

I tried to install 'parted' but I got an error:

configure: error: Your version of libreadline is too old to be used.
Consider upgrading to version 5.2 or newer.

However, I could not find what is 'libreadline' and where to download it from.

So I tried to install 'Gparted', but got an error:

checking for libparted >= 1.7.1... configure: error: *** Requires libparted >= 1.7.1

If I understood correctly, 'libparted' is part of 'parted' (which I failed to install properly).

Am I even going down the right path? Any suggestions on how should I proceed? Is there any easier way to resize my partitions. I would generally of course avoid reinstalling Linux.

My computer is dual-boot (Window XP and Linux Enterprise 4).

I am a beginner user of linux, so please take that into account if you are trying to answer my questions.

Thanks a lot in advance!
Ben

You should not try to re-size partitions from a running system. The best solution would be to get something like GParted or QTParted on a "Live CD". GParted, for example, comes as a dedicated bootable CD image and is a small download. QtParted is included in many live CD distros.

Boot from CD, and do the re-sizing from there. Back up any important data before messing with partitions.

Linux Enterprise 4 .... is that RedHat enterprise Linux 4 ?

if so are you running LVM ?

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/c...r/LVM_GUI.html

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/c...LV_create.html

thanks for your advice. Does Gparted requires Parted? I am a little confused...
Also, I am trying to understand why am I running out of space. my root partition is 5G (which is what recommended in redhat documentation). I am using some heavy computational programs - could that be the reason? is there a way to view the actual files that occupy this 5G space? I am suspecting that I am not using my disk space efficiently, so if I re-partition with Gparted, I want to avoid repeating my mistakes.
Here is my current configuration (/dev/sda2 is my ~120G windows partition):

[root@pooled-173-11 Desktop]# sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 6 48163+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 7 15304 122881185 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 15305 15317 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 15318 19452 33214387+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 15318 18560 26049366 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 18561 19197 5116671 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 19198 19452 2048256 82 Linux swap

Thanks in advance,
ben

Yes, I meant RedHat enterprise Linux 4, sorry for the confusion.

apparently I do have LVM, but I know nothing about it (yet?). can LVM do what Parted and Gparted can, in terms of resizing my root partition?

thanks for your help!

ben

LVM can allow you to resize partitions on a live system.. as shown in the links I posted..

First we need to figure out what is chewing up your drive space..

What is the output of: mount

and the output of: du -sh /[!d,p]* (This one might take a few minutes to run)

this is the output of 'mount':

/dev/sda6 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
/dev/sda3 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda5 on /usr type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/KINGSTON_U3 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,noatime,fscontext=system_ubject_r:removable_t,user=benkeshet)

This is the output of du '-sh /[!d,p]*':

5.6M /bin
77M /boot
63M /etc
3.8G /home
8.0K /initrd
555M /lib
16K /lost+found
952M /media
8.0K /misc
16K /mnt
8.0K /opt
188M /root
17M /sbin
0 /selinux
8.0K /srv
0 /sys
264K /tmp
4.0G /usr
110M /var

Any insights?
Thanks!

You are not using LVM. If so, one of your partition ID would be 8e.

Look at the obvious first.

I have a directory of 2G in my /home which is where i am running some scripts. is that a problem? do you think I should work it from another location? Does it make more sense to store this directory in /usr, or to create another partition for /home (not inside the /)?

It might be just me, but 25 Gig for/usr seems a little excessive.
Trim that by (at least) 15 Gig and create a partition for /home. Once you move that all your problems evaporate.