Linux Debian support - disk partitioning question

Author

disk partitioning question

Brian Kuebert

2006-01-07, 5:48 pm

Hi Folks-

I installed Debian Sarge on my laptop (HP nc8000) and after learning a
whole lot about the process, recompiling the kernel many times, and
getting comfortable with the system I'm very happy with what I've got.
With one exception. When I did the install I should have selected the
option to only have a single partition for my hard disk. Instead I
chose the option that gave me a 8GB for / and created another partition
for /home (72GB or so). My 8 GB partition is approaching full and what
I'd really like to do is just have a single large partition. I've
googled the subject but it doesn't look like there are really any good
ways to do this - what I've found says you can resize partitions and
what I think I want to do is merge them.

If anyone has any advice / tips on the subject I would greatly
appreciate the input.

-Brian

SteveSch

2006-01-08, 5:47 pm

On Sat, 07 Jan 2006 23:43:03 +0000, Brian Kuebert wrote:

> for /home (72GB or so). My 8 GB partition is approaching full and what
> I'd really like to do is just have a single large partition. I've

Hi Brian,

Sorry, I don't really have a solution just a question.

My / is 9.2G and right now I'm using 2.1G with 6.7G available. I actually
wish I had made it smaller.

What do you have that's taking soooo much space?

Here is a link that tells about how to tell where all the space is taken
up

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/143

You might also want to search http://linuxquestions.org.

I'm guessing your /var or /tmp directory is filling up but that's just a
guess. There are people here that know much more than I do and will be
able to give what will probably be a better answer.

Steve

Michael Paoli

2006-01-09, 2:52 am

Brian Kuebert wrote:
> I installed Debian Sarge on my laptop (HP nc8000) and after learning a
....
> With one exception. When I did the install I should have selected the
> option to only have a single partition for my hard disk. Instead I
> chose the option that gave me a 8GB for / and created another partition
> for /home (72GB or so). My 8 GB partition is approaching full and what
> I'd really like to do is just have a single large partition. I've

One may find LVM to be a better long-term solution. To get from where
you are to a solution that mostly or entirely uses LVM could take
several steps, but it certainly can be done as long as you have space
to backup the data, or have sufficient wiggle room (existing spare
space), it should be feasible to get to a more flexible structured
layout.

E.g. one could boot from recovery/install media (if/as needed), shrink
existing filesystems and partitions (in that order) as appropriate,
repartition - allocating the freed regions to LVM, create
filesystem(s), etc. under LVM on the LVM partition(s), and repeat as
required until one has obtained the desired structure.

E.g., my IBM ThinkPad T40p TYPE 2373-G1U partition table appears as
follows:
$ sudo sfdisk -uS -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 4764 cylinders, 240 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System
/dev/hda1 63 619919 619857 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 * 619920 36363599 35743680 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 36363600 36635759 272160 1c Hidden W95 FAT32
(LBA)
/dev/hda4 36635760 72031679 35395920 85 Linux extended
/dev/hda5 36650880 37255678 604799 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 37255680 41449967 4194288 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7 41459040 43636318 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda8 43636320 45813598 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda9 45813600 47990878 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda10 47990880 50168158 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda11 50168160 52345438 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda12 52345440 54522718 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda13 54522720 56699998 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda14 56700000 58877278 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda15 58877280 61054558 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda16 61054560 63231838 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda17 63231840 65409118 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda18 65409120 67586398 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda19 67586400 69763678 2177279 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda20 69763680 71940958 2177279 8e Linux LVM

At present I've got 8 volumes (mostly or entirely used as filesystems)
under LVM. It's much more flexible than partitioning - e.g. I can
typically create and grow them (as long as I still have room), all
live, without need to reboot or repartition.

If/when I want to arrange other partition(s) to use for some other
purpose, that's fairly flexible too - I can use pvmove, if/as needed to
shuffle stuff off one or more contiguous LVM partitions, remove them
from LVM and then change the applicable partition(s) as desired.

Though one can also have /boot, /, and swap under LVM, thus far I
haven't done so, but I have essentially all the other LINUX stuff
under LVM - here's a quick peek at much of what mount(8) shows me:
/dev/hda5 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3
(ro,nosuid,nodev,noatime,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/vg00/lvol1 on /usr type reiserfs (ro,nodev,noatime)
/dev/vg00/lvol2 on /var type reiserfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/vg00/lvol3 on /home type reiserfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/vg00/lvol5 on /var/local/pub type reiserfs
(ro,nosuid,nodev,noatime)
/dev/vg00/lvol4 on /var/local/pub/iso/knoppix type reiserfs
(ro,nosuid,nodev,noatime)
/dev/vg00/lvol7 on /var/local/pub/iso/debian type reiserfs
(ro,nosuid,nodev,noatime)
And what df -k shows me for those filesystems:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 292828 102475 175234 37% /
/dev/hda1 300137 11629 273012 5% /boot
/dev/vg00/lvol1 3317652 2993756 323896 91% /usr
/dev/vg00/lvol2 1740740 1668852 71888 96% /var
/dev/vg00/lvol3 860128 811980 48148 95% /home
/dev/vg00/lvol5 3768200 3647968 120232 97% /var/local/pub
/dev/vg00/lvol4 749540 746320 3220 100%
/var/local/pub/iso/knoppix
/dev/vg00/lvol7 692196 688936 3260 100%
/var/local/pub/iso/debian

And yes, I'm running a Debian (mostly) Sarge system (it was mostly
Woody with a fair bit of Sarge when the presentation, noted by the URL
below, was given).

SEE ALSO
http://www.rawbw.com/~mp/linux/lvm/balug/
resize2fs(8)
resize_reiserfs(8)
mount(8)
parted(8)
fdisk(8)
sfdisk(8)
pvcreate(8)
vgcreate(8)
lvcreate(8)
....