<div class="gmail_quote">On 3 September 2010 18:58, Grant Williamson <<a href="mailto:traxtopel@gmail.com">traxtopel@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> All, I am wondering if anybody has a solution for the following problem. We have a number of machines which have been formatted with just a single file system. Does anyone have a script or tool which can convert a single file system into different partitions based on directory. i.e. / 100 gb convert from / 100gb to /boot 500mb (format) / 40gb (format) /home 65gb (preserve data on disk) Probably a tall order, but I am wonder without backing data up if there is such a tool. So a migration from el5 to el6 could easily take place. </blockquote><div> Get the gparted livecd (google is your friend) You can use that to shrink the existing file system and move it up a bit to leave room for /boot at the beginning of the disk. There isn't anything in gparted to move entire directories, but you can use tar with the options to preserve xattrs and selinux contexts (see the man page). If you don't have enough free space to shrink the root file system, tar off /home on to an external USB drive (with those same options) and restore it after. You need the livecd because you can't shrink a file system on-line, it has to be done off-line. Expect this to take a long time, shrinking file systems is a fairly lengthy processes and moving them even just a bit also takes a considerable amount of time -- it's better (if you can) to shrink to as small as possible, move and then grow. I'd allow a whole day, but it might take less. It could take more. Backups are important, as is a clear head while you're doing this. jch </div></div>