Resizing a partition

[Lucas Chan]

Hi,

I recently signed up with a super-cheap dedicated server company to run one
of my personal sites.  The box was pre-installed with FC2.

Some of the partitions they set up on it are ridiculously small.  I
contacted them saying:

"I'm quickly running out of space on a couple of partitions and need them to
be resized. I understand this needs to be performed at the console with a
boot disk so I'm submitting a ticket to you guys."

They responded saying:

"We cannot resize the partitions without reformatting/reimaging the drive."

Am I missing something obvious?  I thought resizing partitions was quite an
easy thing to do with parted?  Are there some oddities with resizing
partitions in Fedora that I'm not aware of, or am I just getting the quality
technical support you'd expect from an el-cheapo hosting company?

The RHEL parted docs I found indicate to me that this is a simple process:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/sysadmin-guide/s
1-parted-resize-part.html

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Lucas Chan

[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

Lucas Chan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I recently signed up with a super-cheap dedicated server company to run one
> of my personal sites.  The box was pre-installed with FC2.
>
> Some of the partitions they set up on it are ridiculously small.  I
> contacted them saying:
>
> "I'm quickly running out of space on a couple of partitions and need them to
> be resized. I understand this needs to be performed at the console with a
> boot disk so I'm submitting a ticket to you guys."
>
> They responded saying:
>
> "We cannot resize the partitions without reformatting/reimaging the drive."
>
> Am I missing something obvious?  I thought resizing partitions was quite an
> easy thing to do with parted?  Are there some oddities with resizing
> partitions in Fedora that I'm not aware of, or am I just getting the quality
> technical support you'd expect from an el-cheapo hosting company?
>
> The RHEL parted docs I found indicate to me that this is a simple process:
>
> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/sysadmin-guide/s
> 1-parted-resize-part.html
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Regards,
>
> Lucas Chan

Well, you'd have to do it from a rescue console, or with a system rescue 
CD... Basically due to fdisk and mounted filesystems... So unless you 
have access to the machine physically, I don't know how could you do that.

[Robert Locke]

On Fri, 2005-01-28 at 10:05 +1100, Lucas Chan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I recently signed up with a super-cheap dedicated server company to run one
> of my personal sites.  The box was pre-installed with FC2.
>
> Some of the partitions they set up on it are ridiculously small.  I
> contacted them saying:
>
> "I'm quickly running out of space on a couple of partitions and need them to
> be resized. I understand this needs to be performed at the console with a
> boot disk so I'm submitting a ticket to you guys."
>
> They responded saying:
>
> "We cannot resize the partitions without reformatting/reimaging the drive."
>
> Am I missing something obvious?  I thought resizing partitions was quite an
> easy thing to do with parted?  Are there some oddities with resizing
> partitions in Fedora that I'm not aware of, or am I just getting the quality
> technical support you'd expect from an el-cheapo hosting company?
>
> The RHEL parted docs I found indicate to me that this is a simple process:
>
> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/sysadmin-guide/s
> 1-parted-resize-part.html
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Regards,
>
> Lucas Chan

Lucas,

Just looked at that doc page for the first time.  Talk about over
simplification......

Here's the gist.  Partition tables are intended to represent partitions
in a contiguous sense.  I.e. if you have five partitions taking up most
of the drive, but have some extra "unallocated" space (it will reside at
the end of the drive), if you want to grow the middle partition, you
need to move the partitions that follow it out of the way.  Now the idea
of parted is that it may help you to do this in that it can "copy,
resize, move" partitions.

But now things become even more fun.  It is not just about changing the
size of the underlying partition, but also about changing
references/pointers within the filesystem.  The default filesystem for
RHEL3 and for Fedora has been ext3.  parted is capable of resizing ext2
filesystems, but is having problems with the "updated" ext3 filesystems
introduced in RHEL3 and FC1 (see bugzilla for details).

I understand that some people, through much more involved, careful work,
have been able to use parted to resize things but I've been told the
methodologies are less than intuitive for a "newbie".  In other words,
one false move, and bye-bye data.

This all boils down to, for flexibility in resizing, we should implement
LVM.  With LVM, the disk space is virtualized such that the underlying
logical volume does not need to be contiguously stored on the physical
disk/volume.

So since they are going to play the backup/reformat/reimage card, you
may want to suggest that they convert the machine to LVM to support
future flexibility....

--Rob

[Steven Pasternak]

On Thursday 27 January 2005 20:22, Robert Locke wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-01-28 at 10:05 +1100, Lucas Chan wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I recently signed up with a super-cheap dedicated server company to run
> > one of my personal sites.  The box was pre-installed with FC2.
> >
> > Some of the partitions they set up on it are ridiculously small.  I
> > contacted them saying:
> >
> > "I'm quickly running out of space on a couple of partitions and need them
> > to be resized. I understand this needs to be performed at the console
> > with a boot disk so I'm submitting a ticket to you guys."
> >
> > They responded saying:
> >
> > "We cannot resize the partitions without reformatting/reimaging the
> > drive."
> >
> > Am I missing something obvious?  I thought resizing partitions was quite
> > an easy thing to do with parted?  Are there some oddities with resizing
> > partitions in Fedora that I'm not aware of, or am I just getting the
> > quality technical support you'd expect from an el-cheapo hosting company?
> >
> > The RHEL parted docs I found indicate to me that this is a simple
> > process:
> >
> > http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/sysadmin-guid
> > e/s 1-parted-resize-part.html
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Lucas Chan
>
> Lucas,
>
> Just looked at that doc page for the first time.  Talk about over
> simplification......
>
> Here's the gist.  Partition tables are intended to represent partitions
> in a contiguous sense.  I.e. if you have five partitions taking up most
> of the drive, but have some extra "unallocated" space (it will reside at
> the end of the drive), if you want to grow the middle partition, you
> need to move the partitions that follow it out of the way.  Now the idea
> of parted is that it may help you to do this in that it can "copy,
> resize, move" partitions.
>
> But now things become even more fun.  It is not just about changing the
> size of the underlying partition, but also about changing
> references/pointers within the filesystem.  The default filesystem for
> RHEL3 and for Fedora has been ext3.  parted is capable of resizing ext2
> filesystems, but is having problems with the "updated" ext3 filesystems
> introduced in RHEL3 and FC1 (see bugzilla for details).
>
> I understand that some people, through much more involved, careful work,
> have been able to use parted to resize things but I've been told the
> methodologies are less than intuitive for a "newbie".  In other words,
> one false move, and bye-bye data.
>
> This all boils down to, for flexibility in resizing, we should implement
> LVM.  With LVM, the disk space is virtualized such that the underlying
> logical volume does not need to be contiguously stored on the physical
> disk/volume.
>
> So since they are going to play the backup/reformat/reimage card, you
> may want to suggest that they convert the machine to LVM to support
> future flexibility....
>
> --Rob

I don't know if this will help much, but if you (or someone you know) have a 
cd burner, you could download a live-CD. Knoppix is good, and Suse 9.1 live 
is good too. The suse one, i know, has the yast partitioner which, i think, 
does what you want.

-Steven

[Tom Mitchell]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 10:05:40AM +1100, Lucas Chan wrote:
> I recently signed up with a super-cheap dedicated server company

....
> Some of the partitions they set up on it are ridiculously small.  I
> contacted them saying: "I'm quickly running out of space on a couple
> of partitions and need them to be resized.

...
> ... They responded saying: "We cannot resize the
> partitions without reformatting/reimaging the drive."  Am I missing
> something obvious?

Perhaps..
There are two obvious issues.

1)
   The super-cheep part tells me that they do a disk oriented very
   simple backup.  My guess is that they have one DLT tape
   for each box and just image the drive on each box.... 
   i.e. the backup is image oriented and would break if you
   did manage to fiddle this and that.

2) 
   Partitons have a beginning and an end.  If you grow one you have to
   push back and or shrink another.  The beginning of each filesystem
   (superblock) must be located in a standard location in each
   partion.   If you move the start of a partion then the superblock
   will not be found and the data is effectively lost for most mortals.

3)
   stuff that grows is 'volatile' over and above Fedora base and
   perfect for symbolic links from the 'small' partion to the 'large'.
   (Keep good notes....).

So....
Ask them lots of question study the FAQ...

Ask how backup and recovery work.

Ask if two drives (the old and a new) is a possible temp
configuration.  If so then specify how the new disk is to be
partitioned and loaded (Keep It Simple).  Then when the system boots
from the new disk mount the old partions and move data as needed.  In
some case they might place the new as a second disk and you will have
to partion, load it and tell them when it is to be moved to the #1
slot.  Another trick is to have a 'temporary' loaner box.  Set it up
with the new improved  partition sizes.  It will not be free but with
the two boxes on line for about week you can move things from Old to
New.  Most shops keep a hot spare box...

While talking with them discover what style of backup service 
they provide you and other stuff.   Since it is super-cheep
the service list will be short... That is OK ... you 
will know what to plan for.

Lastly tidy up.
You may simply be keeping cruft that you do not need.

yum clean
    up2date --> cruft in /var/spool/up2date
    multiple old  kernels (keep current + one).
    and so on.

[Kevin Fries]

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Hash: SHA1

Lucas Chan wrote:
| Hi,
|
| I recently signed up with a super-cheap dedicated server company to
run one
| of my personal sites.  The box was pre-installed with FC2.
|
| Some of the partitions they set up on it are ridiculously small.  I
| contacted them saying:
|
| "I'm quickly running out of space on a couple of partitions and need
them to
| be resized. I understand this needs to be performed at the console with a
| boot disk so I'm submitting a ticket to you guys."
|
| They responded saying:
|
| "We cannot resize the partitions without reformatting/reimaging the
drive."
|
| Am I missing something obvious?  I thought resizing partitions was
quite an
| easy thing to do with parted?  Are there some oddities with resizing
| partitions in Fedora that I'm not aware of, or am I just getting the
quality
| technical support you'd expect from an el-cheapo hosting company?
|
| The RHEL parted docs I found indicate to me that this is a simple process:
|
|
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/sysadmin-guide/s
| 1-parted-resize-part.html
|
| Thanks in advance.

If you do need to rebuild, may I suggest another alternative.

~  - Back up your current site using cpio, uucp, rsync, whatever

~  - Reformat your existing drive using LVM

~  - Restore your existing system exactly as it was before

now this should take you a couple of hours, but will give you an
incredible amount of flexibility later.  If you need additional space,
simply create additional partitions, on this or new drives, and add them
to the LVM volume set.  Expandable drive system without having to
actually repartition your drive.

Common problem with new Linux users is that they try to apply Windows
solutions to Linux problems.  All drives mount as one tree in Linux, so
separate partitions are less of an issue.  Couple that with better
partition management, and there is no need to increasing the partition
size as there would be in Windows.  Welcome to a better, more stable OS. :-D

HTH

- --
Kevin Fries
Network Administrator
Hydrologic Consultants, Inc of Colorado
[phone]    FAX: [phone]
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