Resize ext3 Partition

[Jeff Vian]

On Sat, 2005-01-22 at 14:54 -0800, Shane Archer wrote:
> At 12:40 PM 1/22/2005, you wrote:
> >I believe you can easily convert a ext3 partition into an ext2 partition 
> >by removing the journal:
> >
> >http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/custom-guide/s1-filesystem-ext2-revert.html
> >
> >Then proceed with your resize and add the journal back again later...
> >
> >Cheers,
> >Raman
> 
> I took a look at this, and it seems to be a good solution, *except* that my 
> root partition (containing /sbin, etc) is the one I want to resize:
> 
> Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda3              4482820   3768508    486592  89% /
> /dev/sda2               101086      7923     87944   9% /boot
> none                    128028         0    128028   0% /dev/shm
> 
> I am assuming that once I execute umount /dev/sda3, I will no longer be 
> able to use /sbin/tune2fs or /sbin/e2fsck (or maybe anything at all; I've 
> never tried unmounting the root partition).
> 

Can't be done when the system is booted.

> Is there any sort of way to get around this? Suppose I created a temporary 
> directory on another partition and copied the necessary tools there, could 
> I execute them from there?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Shane 


If / is that large, what subdirectory is the biggest?  Is /home or /opt
in / and not on a separate partition?  I would guess you have a LOT of
downloaded stuff there that is bloating / unreasonably large.

You can easily do a backup of the bulk of the stuff there to get it out
of the way.  Maybe put it off onto CDs to recover the space. Then after
reducing the space required, the actual OS part of / should be about 3 -
5 GB instead of the current 38GB.  That could be moved to a new
partition in its entirety and by making a small change in grub.conf and
fstab you could boot to the new partiton for your system.

Once the old / partition is not in use you would be free to do whatever
was needed to resize it.