[PLUG] parted advice, please

[Richard Steffens]

For some reason, when I set up the partitions for my new Debian install,
I made a poor choice regarding the sizes of /usr and /home. I've
installed parted (I guessed that apt-get -install parted would do it,
and it did!) and now I'm studying the instructions for how to change
things. I have some questions about what I'm planning to do:

1. Unless I decide to change the size of the Windows partition, do I
need to do anything about the warning I get when I start parted?

  Using /dev/hda
  Warning: The operating system thinks the geometry on /dev/hda is
  1583/255/63. Therefore, cylinder 1024 ends at 8032.499M.  You have
  Windows FAT partition(s) that are not using LBA.  If your BIOS
  supports LBA, then you should switch to LBA by setting the LBA flag
  on all FAT partitions.  Otherwise, make sure the operating system and
  the BIOS have the same geometry before resizing any FAT partitions.

2. Is what I describe below correct, or did I miss something important?
Also, is 1G reasonable for /home, or should I be planning something more
involved?

When I created the partitions, I made /usr 1G and /home 4G. I should
have done that the other way around, but since they are adjacent, it
should be relatively painless to fix. From what I'm reading at:

http://www.gnu.org/manual/parted-1.6.1/html_node/parted_32.html

I should be able to shrink /home, create a new partition at the end of
/home's old space, copy /home to that partition, delete the old /home,
and then add the leftover space from the to /usr. Have I missed anything
important that would prevent me from doing that, or cause me serious
grief? 

Here's the details:

Parted's print command reports:

  Disk geometry for /dev/hda: 0.000-12419.056 megabytes
  Disk label type: msdos
  Minor    Start       End     Type      Filesystem  Flags
  1          0.031   4141.757  primary   FAT         boot
  2       4141.758   4235.888  primary   ext2
  3       4235.889  12417.429  extended
  5       4235.919   4361.396  logical   linux-swap
  6       4361.427   5334.082  logical   ext2
  7       5334.113   9240.512  logical   ext2
  8       9240.543   9287.578  logical   ext2
  9       9287.609  12417.429  logical   ext2

df -h reports:

  Filesystem          Size   Used Avail Use% Mounted on
  /dev/hda2            91M    28M   58M  33% /
  /dev/hda6           957M   772M  137M  85% /usr
  /dev/hda7           3.8G   271M  3.2G   8% /home
  /dev/hda8            45M    22k   43M   1% /tmp
  /dev/hda9           3.0G    89M  2.7G   4% /var

The sequence of instructions would be as follows:

Shrink /home to about 1G.

(parted) resize 7 5334.113 6358.113

Make a new, 1G partition at the end of the free space. It will be #10.

(parted) mkpartfs logical ext2 8216.512 9240.512

Copy the old /home to its new location.

(parted) cp 7 10

Delete the old /home.

(parted) rm 7

Resize /usr to use up the newly available space.

(parted) resize 6 4361.427 8216.511

Quit parted and edit /etc/fstab.

Since deleting the old #7 caused 8, 9, and 10 to be renumbered 7, 8, and
9, then the new /home is 9, /tmp is 7, and /var is 8. So, I'd need to
change some lines in fstab from:

/dev/hda7     /home   ext2   defaults         0     2
/dev/hda8     /tmp    ext2   defaults         0     2
/dev/hda9     /var    ext2   defaults         0     2

to:

/dev/hda9     /home   ext2   defaults         0     2
/dev/hda7     /tmp    ext2   defaults         0     2
/dev/hda8     /var    ext2   defaults         0     2

Then, after I reboot, I should have more room in /usr, less room in
/home, and everybody else stayed the same.


-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens
"Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati"
http://rsteff.home.attbi.com/