shrinking reiserfs partitions, filesystems

jackson byers byersjab at gmail.com
Wed Mar 4 18:45:08 UTC 2009


I am more than a little confused about the need to resize (shrink) a
filesystem
in addition to shrinking the partition


---from man resize_reiserfs
SYNOPSIS
       resize_reiserfs [ -s [+|-]size[K|M|G] ] [ -j dev ] [ -fqv ] device

DESCRIPTION
       The resize_reiserfs tool resizes an unmounted reiserfs file system.
It
       enlarges or shrinks an reiserfs file system located on a device....

If the -s option is not specified, the filesystem will
       be  resized  to fill the given device.


 If  you  wish to shrink a reiserfs partition, first use resize_reiserfs
       to shrink the file system. You may then use  cfdisk(8)  to  shrink
the
       device.  When  shrinking  the  size of the device, make sure you do
not
       make it smaller than the reduced size of the reiserfs filesystem.
--- end man page---


I had thought that the size of a filesystem was just the amount
of stuff in there as given by df in the Used column
eg on my external usb /dev/sdc1  which is one large reiserfs partition
[root at bootp ~]# df -kh
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
/dev/sdc1             233G   16G  218G   7% /media/disk-1

so, to me that meant the "size of the filesystem" was given in Used = 16G
but it now seems that is wrong? ie
"size of the filesystem" is actually the entire diskpartition =233G ?


so if I want to shrink dev/sdc1 partition down to 50G
 I must
1) shrink the filesystem first using resize_reiserfs also to 50G ?
2) then use cfdisk to shrink the partition to 50G ?

If that is correct, will I retain or lose my current data in that 16G Used?


Is it easier/better to use parted,gparted... for shrinking reiserfs
partitions?

there was one recent  msg on this list  from Mikkel I think
saying parted  can handle resizing both partitions and filesystems?
If that is right, it seems less chance for error compared to using two
separate tools.

One thing i found on google  a 2007 gparted manual
says  libreiserfs   is needed
Is there any way to get  libreiserfs  on my fc5 system?
There are apparently live cds,knoppix, gparted,...
 will these have everything needed including libreiserfs?

thanks for any help, pointers,....
Jack
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/attachments/20090304/c1eb1a20/attachment-0001.html 


More information about the users mailing list