During installation of Debian (Sarge) last year, I underestimated the boot u
p partition size for
Kernel and other stuff. Kernels had grown a lot. Wow!

I booted up KNOPPIX v4.02 CD, and tried to resize / partition (I think this 
is where my Kernel
and other boot stuff are stored), but it wouldn't let me resize.

Is there something I can do? Replace old Kernel (Linux foobar 2.6.14-2-k7 #1
 Wed Dec 28 19:14:46
UTC 2005 i686 GNU/Linux), merge partitions, etc.? I hope I don't have I have
 to reformat. I only
have one HDD. I would like to keep multiple Kernels too like I used to, then
 I ran out of disk
space to keep only one.

I use Grub for my boot loader. This is what is in my /boot if it helps:
# ls -all /boot
total 2991
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root    1024 Dec 29 14:49 .
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root    1024 Feb  2 15:28 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  671012 Dec 28 12:40 System.map-2.6.14-2-k7
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   65297 Dec 28 09:51 config-2.6.14-2-k7
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    1024 Dec 29 14:49 grub
-rw-------  1 root root  992387 Dec 29 14:49 initrd.img-2.6.14-2-k7
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 1311890 Dec 28 12:39 vmlinuz-2.6.14-2-k7
# ls -all /boot/grub
total 170
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root   1024 Dec 29 14:49 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root   1024 Dec 29 14:49 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     30 Jun  5  2005 device.map
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7776 Jun  5  2005 e2fs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7504 Jun  5  2005 fat_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   8320 Jun  5  2005 jfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   3296 Dec 29 14:49 menu.lst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   3296 Dec 29 14:49 menu.lst~
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7008 Jun  5  2005 minix_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   9216 Jun  5  2005 reiserfs_stage1_5
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    512 Jun  5  2005 stage1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108168 Jun  5  2005 stage2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   9288 Jun  5  2005 xfs_stage1_

According to df and du:
# du /boot
169     /boot/grub
3158    /boot
# df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1               270969    173619     82894  68% /
tmpfs                   518196         0    518196   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda5             14421344   1625488  12063296  12% /home
/dev/hda6              4807056   2271924   2290948  50% /usr
/dev/hda7               918322    357730    511596  42% /var
/dev/hda8               918322     16492    852834   2% /tmp
/dev/hda9              4807056    189280   4373592   5% /usr/local
/dev/hda10              918322     16451    852875   2% /swap
/dev/hda11             2324384     65612   2140696   3% /extra
/dev/hda12            47383396   3562680  41413780   8% /others


I should still have plenty of room. Where did all the disk space go? Or is i
t another
partition/directories? When I downloaded and installed the newer Kernel, it 
said I ran out of
disk space so it never finished so I had to clean up the mess. I assume it n
eeds extra room for
temporary stuff (extractions?)?

# apt-get install linux-image-2.6.16-1-k7
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Suggested packages:
linux-doc-2.6.16 linux-source-2.6.16
Recommended packages:
libc6-i686
The following NEW packages will be installed:
linux-image-2.6.16-1-k7
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 15.8MB of archives.
After unpacking 45.5MB of additional disk space will be used.

It looks like I need more than 46 MB??

Thank you in advance. 
--
"Be thine enemy an ant, see in him an elephant." --Turkish Proverb
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ANTant@zimage.com wrote:
> During installation of Debian (Sarge) last year, I underestimated the boot
 up partition size for
> Kernel and other stuff. Kernels had grown a lot. Wow!
>
> I booted up KNOPPIX v4.02 CD, and tried to resize / partition (I think thi
s is where my Kernel
> and other boot stuff are stored), but it wouldn't let me resize.
>
> Is there something I can do? [...]

It looks like you finally have an excuse to recompile the kernel from
source rather than install a binary kernel image.

Download the kernel source; it'll go into /usr/src; un-tar it into your
home directory, copy /boot/config-xxx to .config in the source
directory, do make menuconfig select which things you don't need that
are bloating your kernel and remove them, read the manual page on
make-kpkg, then do it.

When you have a kernel that's just too bloated, or it just won't work,
you have to recompile it. I'd suspect that the modules are too big.
Debian likes to configure almost everything as modules, but for a
particular user's system, probably 99% of the modules are unneeded, so
when you do "make menuconfig", you'll disable a great many modules that
have nothing to do with your system.


[fups -> alt.os.linux.debian]

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

> > During installation of Debian (Sarge) last year, I underestimated the boot up partition 
size for 
[vbcol=seagreen]
> It looks like you finally have an excuse to recompile the kernel from
> source rather than install a binary kernel image.

Ugh. I remember compiling Kernel back in Red Hat days and that was not fun. 
I did it like for a
few hours and those options really had me stomped. Wasted too many hours on 
it. Of course that
was when I had a lot of free time, but not these days (working man!).


> When you have a kernel that's just too bloated, or it just won't work,
> you have to recompile it. I'd suspect that the modules are too big.
> Debian likes to configure almost everything as modules, but for a
> particular user's system, probably 99% of the modules are unneeded, so
> when you do "make menuconfig", you'll disable a great many modules that
> have nothing to do with your system.

I don't really need the little 5% speed improvements since this Athlon XP 22
00+ machine is
already fast enough as a workstation (not a gaming machine). All it does is 
basic stuff like
Word processing, surfing Web, etc.

Due to lack of free time, I don't have time to compile and stuff. Hence, why
 I didn't use Gentoo
(don't have the time to compile, configure, etc.). I guess I will keep using
 2.6.14 Kernel until
I have free time to redo my partitions by reformatting my HDD or something.

Thanks for replying. 
--
"Be thine enemy an ant, see in him an elephant." --Turkish Proverb
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \      Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
| |o   o| |          Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL): http://aqfl.net
\ _ /                        Please remove ANT if replying by e-mail.
( )

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

You might try Gparted. It's a live cd specifically designed for resizing
partitions.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In comp.os.linux.misc Ed LaBonte <ewl@localhost.localdomain> wrote:
> You might try Gparted. It's a live cd specifically designed for resizing
> partitions.

I actually used qtparted. I don't think KNOPPIX comes with gparted. Both are
 frontends. So I assume gparted will
have the same problem (can't resize).
--
"Be thine enemy an ant, see in him an elephant." --Turkish Proverb
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \      Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
| |o   o| |          Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL): http://aqfl.net
\ _ /                        Please remove ANT if replying by e-mail.
( )

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Thu, 25 May 2006 16:49:20 -0500, ANTant@zimage.com
<ANTant@zimage.com> wrote in alt.os.linux.debian:

> I booted up KNOPPIX v4.02 CD, and tried to resize / partition (I
> think this is where my Kernel and other boot stuff are stored), but
> it wouldn't let me resize.

Are you using an ext3 filesystem? If so, you should be able to resize
your partitions with the Knoppix tools after turning the journal off.

$ man 8 tune2fs

You'll need to shrink hda5 before enlarging hda1.

PJR :-)
--
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._\`:_ F S M _:' \_,    PJR: http://www.insurgent.org/~pjr/
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[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In comp.os.linux.misc, on Thu 25 May 2006 22:49, ANTant@zimage.com
<ANTant@zimage.com> wrote:

> During installation of Debian (Sarge) last year, I underestimated the
> boot up partition size for Kernel and other stuff. Kernels had grown a
> lot. Wow!
>
> I booted up KNOPPIX v4.02 CD, and tried to resize / partition (I think
> this is where my Kernel and other boot stuff are stored), but it
> wouldn't let me resize.

Before you can increase the size of a partition, you need to have
unallocated space *immediately* after the last block of that partition.

Given the layout of your disk, I think it extremely unlikely that you
would want to mess about moving the start of /dev/hda5 to reduce its
size then moving the start of your extended partition by the same
amount.

This is certainly not something to try to do in a hurry, and you would
need to be *absolutely* sure that you had reliable backups of
everything just in case something went wrong.

> Is there something I can do?

[snip]
> # df
> Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hda1               270969    173619     82894  68% /
> tmpfs                   518196         0    518196   0% /dev/shm
> /dev/hda5             14421344   1625488  12063296  12% /home
> /dev/hda6              4807056   2271924   2290948  50% /usr
> /dev/hda7               918322    357730    511596  42% /var
> /dev/hda8               918322     16492    852834   2% /tmp
> /dev/hda9              4807056    189280   4373592   5% /usr/local
> /dev/hda10              918322     16451    852875   2% /swap
> /dev/hda11             2324384     65612   2140696   3% /extra
> /dev/hda12            47383396   3562680  41413780   8% /others
>

One alternative that does not rely on resizing anything is to swap
around *how* you are using your partitions. For example, you could
move / onto /dev/hda8 then put /tmp onto /dev/hda1 this would more than
triple the size of your root partition.

You should not need to copy /tmp because by definition it should be
transient data, but if you want to be extremely cautious, you could
copy it to a directory under home whilst you make the changes.

In your place, I would do these manoeuvres on the CLI under Knoppix to
be sure that nothing will change in the middle of everything.

1       Mount /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda8 - they will normally mount as
/mnt/hda1 and /mnt/hda8 respectively

2       rm -rf /mnt/hda8/*

3       cp -a /mnt/hda1/* /mnt/hda8

You will then need to edit /mnt/hda8/etc/fstab to mount / on /dev/hda8
and to mount /tmp on /dev/hda1

You will also need to edit /mnt/hda8/boot/grub/menu.lst to look for the
grub root directory on (hd0,7) and to look for the Linux root
on /dev/hda8

The first time that you reboot, you will probably need to specify
root=/dev/hda8 on the grub parameter line and you may need to reinstall
grub to be certain that it will look in the right place in future.

Once you are sure that everything is working OK, you can delete the old
directories from /dev/hda1

HTH
--
Robert
This information provided free of charge for those willing to accept
it. Others who wish to be spoon-fed may acquire my services at the
discounted rate of 135 GB Pounds per hour or part thereof.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In comp.os.linux.misc Peter J Ross <pjr@kookbusters.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 25 May 2006 16:49:20 -0500, ANTant@zimage.com
> <ANTant@zimage.com> wrote in alt.os.linux.debian:
 
[vbcol=seagreen]
> Are you using an ext3 filesystem? If so, you should be able to resize
> your partitions with the Knoppix tools after turning the journal off.

Yes, ext3 FS.


> $ man 8 tune2fs

What exactly am I looking for in here? I don't know what journal is. Sorry i
f I sound I like a Linux newbie/n00b
(I am). Heh.


> You'll need to shrink hda5 before enlarging hda1.

It doesn't appear that I can shrink hda5 according to qtparted and gparted. 
Is it because it is in an extended
area (hda2)??
--
"Be thine enemy an ant, see in him an elephant." --Turkish Proverb
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \      Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
| |o   o| |          Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL): http://aqfl.net
\ _ /                        Please remove ANT if replying by e-mail.
( )

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In message <4L- dnb4jnZ5IgeTZnZ2dnUVZ_vudnZ2d@mminternet
.net>,
ANTant@zimage.com writes
>In comp.os.linux.misc Peter J Ross <pjr@kookbusters.org> wrote: 
> 
> 
>
>Yes, ext3 FS.
>
> 
>
>What exactly am I looking for in here? I don't know what journal is.
>Sorry if I sound I like a Linux newbie/n00b
>(I am). Heh.

The ext3 file system is an ext2 file system + journalling.
A journal accumulates file updates before they are actually applied to
your files. Google for more about databases and journalling.
>
> 
>
>It doesn't appear that I can shrink hda5 according to qtparted and
>gparted. Is it because it is in an extended
>area (hda2)??

Do you have hda6,7,8... etc?

See http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php for a feature list.

--
Jeremy Boden

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In comp.os.linux.misc Jeremy Boden <jeremy@jboden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <4L- dnb4jnZ5IgeTZnZ2dnUVZ_vudnZ2d@mminternet
.net>,
> ANTant@zimage.com writes 
[vbcol=seagreen]
> The ext3 file system is an ext2 file system + journalling.
> A journal accumulates file updates before they are actually applied to
> your files. Google for more about databases and journalling. 
[vbcol=seagreen]
> Do you have hda6,7,8... etc?

Yes, up to 12:
$ df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1               270969    173622     82891  68% /
tmpfs                   518196         0    518196   0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda5             14421344   1380884  12307900  11% /home
/dev/hda6              4807056   2278016   2284856  50% /usr
/dev/hda7               918322    360200    509126  42% /var
/dev/hda8               918322     16496    852830   2% /tmp
/dev/hda9              4807056    189280   4373592   5% /usr/local
/dev/hda10              918322     16451    852875   2% /swap
/dev/hda11             2324384     65612   2140696   3% /extra
/dev/hda12            47383396   3562680  41413780   8% /others


> See http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php for a feature list.

It seems to support ext3 FS resize. I don't recall what version of gparted/q
tparted/parted
comes with KNOPPIX v4.02 CD.
--
"Ladies and gentlemen, hoboes and tramps...Crosseyed Mosquitoes and bow-legg
ed ants...I've come to tell you the story..." --unknown
/\___/\
/ /\ /\ \      Phillip (Ant) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
| |o   o| |          Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL): http://aqfl.net
\ _ /                        Please remove ANT if replying by e-mail.
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