[NCLUG] Question regarding resizing ext3 filesystems

[Grant Johnson]

Jeffrey D. Means wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>I have a 2Gb root partition that I want to resize up to around 30Gb.  Has 
>anyone had any experience with this and is it even a good idea or should I 
>just consider moving my /var and /usr directories to another partition?  I am 
>running at that point of no extra space on my drive right now so any 
>recommendations would be appreciated greatly.
>
>  
>
To resize EXT3, you need to either have more space on the disk 
immediately after the full partition, or you need to be running LVM so 
you can add space (see why LVM is good even if you only have one disk, 
and just have one root partition on it).   After you make room, if you 
can, you can only resize EXT3 when it is unmounted.

I usually use ReiserFS because I can resize (bigger at least) while the 
FS is hot.

If you do not have space to make that partition bigger, and you are no 
running LVM, you will need to move it to a new drive, and that can be a 
little tricky.   You will need to rebuild your bootloader to tell it 
where the new root is.

Knoppix is a good way to build the partitions on the new disk, and copy 
the stuff over.