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Hi,
I'd like to shrink my existing (ext3) root partition in order to create
a couple of new partitions on the disk. I know how to do this using
parted (1.6.21), but obviously this cannot be done unless I first
unmount the partition in question, meaning that I can't do it from
within Slack. I thought I could simply use Knoppix (3.7), but it appears
that its version of parted (1.6.9) does not handle ext3 resizing
(without converting to ext2 first, which I don't want to do). So my
question is this: is there a live/rescue cd distro which is up-to-date
enough to have a version of parted which can do what I want, or failing
that, is there some other way for me to achieve this without blowing
away my existing root partition?
Cheers,
Shannon

On 2005-02-16, Shannon Lloyd <sjlloydNO@SPAMlikwid.com> wrote:
> I'd like to shrink my existing (ext3) root partition in order to create
> a couple of new partitions on the disk. I know how to do this using
> parted (1.6.21), but obviously this cannot be done unless I first
> unmount the partition in question, meaning that I can't do it from
> within Slack.

Really, the entire disk should not be in use, since parted will likely
need to rewrite the partition table.

> So my
> question is this: is there a live/rescue cd distro which is up-to-date
> enough to have a version of parted which can do what I want, or failing
> that, is there some other way for me to achieve this without blowing
> away my existing root partition?

Where did you look?

FWIW, CRUX does come with parted, but I don't know which version. You
could also boot from your Slackware CD, copy a statically-compiled
parted to your in-memory root filesystem, and run it from there.
(That's actually similar to what I did to resize my HFS+ partition on my
iBook.)

--keith

--
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On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 21:10:54 -0800, Keith Keller wrote:
> On 2005-02-16, Shannon Lloyd <sjlloydNO@SPAMlikwid.com> wrote:
>> I'd like to shrink my existing (ext3) root partition in order to create
>> a couple of new partitions on the disk. I know how to do this using
>> parted (1.6.21), but obviously this cannot be done unless I first
>> unmount the partition in question, meaning that I can't do it from
>> within Slack.
>
> Really, the entire disk should not be in use, since parted will likely
> need to rewrite the partition table.
>
>> So my
>> question is this: is there a live/rescue cd distro which is up-to-date
>> enough to have a version of parted which can do what I want, or failing
>> that, is there some other way for me to achieve this without blowing
>> away my existing root partition?
>
> Where did you look?
>
> FWIW, CRUX does come with parted, but I don't know which version. You
> could also boot from your Slackware CD, copy a statically-compiled
> parted to your in-memory root filesystem, and run it from there.
> (That's actually similar to what I did to resize my HFS+ partition on my
> iBook.)
>
> --keith
>

Funny thought, on my system, the previous topic to this was "Have you
considered a penis extension" (or something similiar), this topic here
is "resizing ext3 root partition"

--
greymaus
97.025% of statistics are wrong

Shannon Lloyd wrote in <4212ce9e$1@dnews.tpgi.com.au>:

> Hi,
> I'd like to shrink my existing (ext3) root partition in order to create
> a couple of new partitions on the disk. I know how to do this using
> parted (1.6.21), but obviously this cannot be done unless I first
> unmount the partition in question, meaning that I can't do it from
> within Slack. I thought I could simply use Knoppix (3.7), but it appears
> that its version of parted (1.6.9) does not handle ext3 resizing
> (without converting to ext2 first, which I don't want to do). So my
> question is this: is there a live/rescue cd distro which is up-to-date
> enough to have a version of parted which can do what I want, or failing
> that, is there some other way for me to achieve this without blowing
> away my existing root partition?
> Cheers,
> Shannon

Slackware disk 2 is usually a live CD with an up-to-date parted on it,
although IIRC pat may not have done that this time. You can usually get a
parted bootdisk from the parted website if not. But doesn't ext3 just work
like ext2 with an extra file on it if your tool doesn't understand ext3?

MikeyD wrote:
> Shannon Lloyd wrote in <4212ce9e$1@dnews.tpgi.com.au>:
>
> > Hi,
> > I'd like to shrink my existing (ext3) root partition in order to
create
> > a couple of new partitions on the disk. I know how to do this using
> > parted (1.6.21), but obviously this cannot be done unless I first
> > unmount the partition in question, meaning that I can't do it from
> > within Slack. I thought I could simply use Knoppix (3.7), but it
appears
> > that its version of parted (1.6.9) does not handle ext3 resizing
> > (without converting to ext2 first, which I don't want to do). So my
> > question is this: is there a live/rescue cd distro which is
up-to-date
> > enough to have a version of parted which can do what I want, or
failing
> > that, is there some other way for me to achieve this without
blowing
> > away my existing root partition?
> > Cheers,
> > Shannon
>
> Slackware disk 2 is usually a live CD with an up-to-date parted on
it,
> although IIRC pat may not have done that this time. You can usually
get a
> parted bootdisk from the parted website if not. But doesn't ext3 just
work
> like ext2 with an extra file on it if your tool doesn't understand
ext3?


SystemRescueCd http://www.sysresccd.org/ has all the tools you need to
resize any partition.

Dennisk

dennisk wrote:
> MikeyD wrote:
>
>
> SystemRescueCd http://www.sysresccd.org/ has all the tools you need to
> resize any partition.
>
> Dennisk
>

Thanks. I discovered this one about half way through using fdisk to
repartition the drive :P
I ended up trying to use parted 1.6.20 from the current Ubuntu live cd,
but even that refused to resize ext3 (so I'm not sure if the one on the
SystemRescueCD would work either - their most recent changelog lists
parted-1.6.11). I thought I had discovered the answer in using partimage
to backup the partition and restore it to a smaller partition, until I
read that partimage won't restore to smaller partitions (is it just
using dd behind the scenes?). In the end I just backed up to an external
drive (usb) using tar -czpf, fdisk'ed the drive, recreated the
filesystems, extracted the tar back onto the (smaller) partition, and
everything seems fine. There's undoubtedly an easier way, but I didn't
find it.

Shannon Lloyd wrote in <4215291d@dnews.tpgi.com.au>:

> dennisk wrote:
>> MikeyD wrote:
>>
>>
>> SystemRescueCd http://www.sysresccd.org/ has all the tools you need to
>> resize any partition.
>>
>> Dennisk
>>
>
> Thanks. I discovered this one about half way through using fdisk to
> repartition the drive :P
> I ended up trying to use parted 1.6.20 from the current Ubuntu live cd,
> but even that refused to resize ext3 (so I'm not sure if the one on the
> SystemRescueCD would work either - their most recent changelog lists
> parted-1.6.11). I thought I had discovered the answer in using partimage
> to backup the partition and restore it to a smaller partition, until I
> read that partimage won't restore to smaller partitions (is it just
> using dd behind the scenes?). In the end I just backed up to an external
> drive (usb) using tar -czpf, fdisk'ed the drive, recreated the
> filesystems, extracted the tar back onto the (smaller) partition, and
> everything seems fine. There's undoubtedly an easier way, but I didn't
> find it.

I'd have thought converting to ext2 and back would be an easier way than
doing that. It's just a simple tune2fs isn't it?

On 2005-02-17, MikeyD <m_donaghy50@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Slackware disk 2 is usually a live CD with an up-to-date parted on it,
> although IIRC pat may not have done that this time. You can usually get a
> parted bootdisk from the parted website if not. But doesn't ext3 just work
> like ext2 with an extra file on it if your tool doesn't understand ext3?

Slackware 10.0 comes with parted 1.16.11 in the extras directory on CD 3.
I don't know whether parted 1.16.11 will do what is needed. It ought
to be possible to boot the rescue disk, install the parted package on
the ramdisk and then go to town on the partition, if parted 1.16.11
will do what is needed.