I just succeeded in doubling the size of my ext3 / partition. I am
writing this both to share my joy and to ask whether there is anything
else that needs to be done. (I had tried "parted" on one or two rescue
CDs, but it didn't work for me.)

Before the operation, my disk looked like this:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1566 12578863+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 1567 1697 1052257+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 1698 2348 5229157+ 83 Linux

As you can see, most of it was unused. After booting the Slackware CD,
I performed a series a 3 steps:

(1) I used fdisk to enlarge my / partition.
This is what my disk looked like afterward:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1566 12578863+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 1567 1697 1052257+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 1698 3005 10506510 83 Linux

(2) I ran "e2fsck -f /dev/hda3" (I tried to go to step 3 without
it, but got a message saying that it needed to be done).

(3) I ran "resize2fs /dev/hda3"

That was it!

Good Job!! That is exactly how the man pages said it should be done.I did some research and could not find anything specific, I guess it's just an
fdisk thing.....LOL......

Hey! I thought this post was lost in the dungeons. Yeah, it's all in the man pages, except that I wasn't sure it would work on ext3 -- but, it did,

Hmmmm..........glad I found this post

<edit>Moved the rest of the reply here since I'm asking a related but slightly different question and it would be more appropriate in a separate thread. </edit>