Hi, Pete One day I did something similar to it. I had four partition: */boot/efi* */ # /dev/sda2* */home # /dev/sda3* */tmp # /dev/sda4* and my goal was to completely move my partition */home* after */tmp* and increase */* partition with the new /home's free space. I did it in a simple way: I moved the contents of / and /home to other partitions, then I joined old / and /home and I moved all contents of old / to this new partition. Let's go: I booted my laptop within a live usb and I created two new partitions (sda5, sda6), mounted them and moved all contents*:* # mounting things (you can create sda5 and sda6 either with fdisk, cfdisk or even with gparted) mount /dev/sda2 /tmp/root mount /dev/sda3 /tmp/home mount /dev/sda5 /tmp/root-tmp # partition that I created now mount /dev/sda6 /tmp/home-tmp # partition that I created now # moving contents mv /tmp/root /tmp/root-tmp mv /tmp/home /tmp/home-tmp # I highly recommend you to format both partitions that are going to be joined mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2 mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda3 # joining / and /home # to do it, use *fdisk* to delete both (/dev/sda2 /dev/sda3) and create a new one # or use *cfdisk* to increase /dev/sda2. Suppose you're going to use fdisk (it was what I used): *umount /dev/sda2* *umount /dev/sda3* *fdisk /dev/sda* *> d # delete partition* *> 2 # partition /dev/sda2* *> d* *> 3 # partition /dev/sda3* *> n # new partition (fdisk will join free space on old /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3)* *> 2 # probably 2 due to /dev/sda2* *> Enter 2x* *> p # print new partition scheme to verify* *> w # write change; JUST DO IT WHEN YOU'RE SURE ABOUT YOUR CHANGES.* # now, mount your new partition and move all content: mount /dev/sda2 /tmp/root mv /tmp/root-tmp /tmp/root # move home files too: mv /tmp/home-tmp /tmp/root-tmp # root-tmp is your new home partition on /dev/sda5 # finally, just update the partitions UUID on /tmp/root/*etc/fstab*: blkid | grep sda2 # looking for your new / partition UUID blkid | grep sda5 # looking for your new /home partition UUID # get both UUID and update them on your fstab file on /tmp/root/etc/fstab # I don't remember exactly, but maybe you need to update your grub: grub-mkconfig Once done, I restarted and all things were working well. If you really want to try it, *I highly recommend you to test it before* on a VM or something like that, unless you know what you are doing. I hope it can fit your problem :). Daniel Venturini DevOps | CyberSecurity enthusiastic | GNU/Linux btw, I use Arch Em ter., 12 de out. de 2021 às 09:00, < arch-general-request@lists.archlinux.org> escreveu:
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Today's Topics:
1. System manipulation (pete) 2. Re: System manipulation (Josephine Pfeiffer) 3. Re: System manipulation (Ben Mezger) 4. Re: System manipulation (David Rosenstrauch) 5. Re: System manipulation (Tasnad Kernetzky)
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Message: 1 Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 14:51:52 +0100 From: pete <pg.nikolic1@gmail.com> To: General Discussion about Arch Linux <arch-general@lists.archlinux.org> Subject: [arch-general] System manipulation Message-ID: <20211011145152.0823c123@ds9.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Hi Folks
Found myself with a rather awkward situation my / partition has only got 5% free i need to enlarge it somewhat i have another drive i can throw at the job my question is how do i go about moving "/" to another drive i have looked but cant find an answer i do not really want to do a complete reinstall as i have so much extra software installed some of which has been a real pain to get working .
Any help please
Pete .
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Message: 2 Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 17:53:32 +0200 From: Josephine Pfeiffer <pfeifferj@archlinux.ch> To: arch-general@lists.archlinux.org Subject: Re: [arch-general] System manipulation Message-ID: <462dbff5-fb37-c5eb-cbca-cbcbe6c7c98c@archlinux.ch> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
I think you can use gparted to move the partition to another drive.
Best, Josie
Hi Folks
Found myself with a rather awkward situation my / partition has only got 5% free i need to enlarge it somewhat i have another drive i can throw at
On 10/11/21 15:51, pete via arch-general wrote: the job
my question is how do i go about moving "/" to another drive i have looked but cant find an answer i do not really want to do a complete reinstall as i have so much extra software installed some of which has been a real pain to get working .
Any help please
Pete .
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Message: 3 Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 10:58:22 -0300 From: Ben Mezger <me@benmezger.nl> To: pete via arch-general <arch-general@lists.archlinux.org>, General Discussion about Arch Linux <arch-general@lists.archlinux.org> Subject: Re: [arch-general] System manipulation Message-ID: <m2h7dnzmrl.fsf@benmezger.nl> Content-Type: text/plain
Can't you do something like:
$ dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/drive1/backuproot.img $ dd if=/media/drive1/backuproot.img of=/dev/sdb # write back to disk
-- Ben Mezger
https://seds.nl https://github.com/benmezger
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Message: 4 Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 10:28:50 -0400 From: David Rosenstrauch <darose@darose.net> To: pete via arch-general <arch-general@lists.archlinux.org> Subject: Re: [arch-general] System manipulation Message-ID: <e08d2ffd-1755-93d4-8d5d-23400112c5ed@darose.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Hi Folks
Found myself with a rather awkward situation my / partition has only got 5% free i need to enlarge it somewhat i have another drive i can throw at
On 10/11/21 9:51 AM, pete via arch-general wrote: the job
my question is how do i go about moving "/" to another drive i have looked but cant find an answer i do not really want to do a complete reinstall as i have so much extra software installed some of which has been a real pain to get working .
Any help please
Pete .
One strategy that you might want to consider that I've used before and has helped many times, is to not move the entire root filesystem, but rather, just pieces of it. For example, on my system, /home, /var, and /usr/local/share all reside on different volumes. That frees up a lot of space on the root partition.
Couple of other suggestions:
1) If you do decide to take my suggestion above, best way to do it (IMO) is to drop to system rescue mode (best to not copy /home while you're logged in) tar up the sub-dir, un-tar it onto the other device, then delete it off of the root fs. (Best to make sure the data all got copied over correctly before you delete it.) Then, after you've verified all looks good, change your fstab to mount the new device.
2) You might want to consider using LVM (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LVM) going forward. If you have /home, /var, etc. on other devices, then those dirs are the only ones likely to need significant more space going forward, while your root fs isn't likely to grow much. If you use LVM, you can just throw some additional disk space from the VG to /home whenever you need more space there. (Or even add new disks.)
HTH,
DR
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Message: 5 Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 16:39:27 +0200 From: Tasnad Kernetzky <tasnadk@gmail.com> To: arch-general@lists.archlinux.org Subject: Re: [arch-general] System manipulation Message-ID: <29ee0483-4b38-f895-7bad-f43ea8eb6fbf@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
Hi,
If you are planning to move to another drive anyways soon, did you try to free up space?
My usual suspects are
* pacman -Sc or -Scc
* journalctl --vacuum-size=50M
* logs and other stuff on /var
* nfs cache
Also, ncdu can be of great help to find huge files and folders you might not need any more.
Best,
Tasnad
Hi Folks
Found myself with a rather awkward situation my / partition has only got 5% free i need to enlarge it somewhat i have another drive i can throw at
On 11.10.21 15:51, pete via arch-general wrote: the job
my question is how do i go about moving "/" to another drive i have looked but cant find an answer i do not really want to do a complete reinstall as i have so much extra software installed some of which has been a real pain to get working .
Any help please
Pete .