best way to increase size of home partition

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello,

I have opensuse 12.3 on a multiboot machine. I will upgrade to 13 at some point but I haven’t yet. My home partition is only 10GB because I don’t use it very often but right now I am doing a project on opensuse and I need more space. The SSD that the partition is on has available space, but I haven’t been able to find good information on how to expand the partition into the unallocated space. I opened partitioner, but it wasn’t obvious how to use it. Is this something I should do from a CD like gparted or is there a method using a kde tool? I have more experience with gnome and that is some of the issue here.

Suggestions would be appreciated.

LMHmedchem

2

Try Gparted livecd GParted – Welcome (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ )

3

You can of course not do that with a KDE tool, nor any other desktop tool from any desktop. Because when you use the desktop, you are loged in as a normal user and thus using /home. You can not change the size of a file system while using it.

So you can do this either from a root session from the real console where you then first umount /home before starting to do anything with it, or you use another system (like the Gparted CD advised above).

But whichever method you use, first make a backup of all in /home!

4

On 2015-01-12, LMHmedchem <LMHmedchem@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> I opened partitioner, but it
> wasn’t obvious how to use it. Is this something I should do from a CD
> like gparted or is there a method using a kde tool? I have more
> experience with gnome and that is some of the issue here.
>
> Suggestions would be appreciated.

Many would disagree with my perspective, but since you have asked for the best way to increase the size of a
partition, the best way is to use a tool that is independent of your desktop environment or indeed having a desktop
environment: I use `parted’, which in my opinion deprecates fdisk (since parted can handle both GPT and MBR).

First thing is backup all you data. Then you run `parted’ run from console (your commands would almost certainly be
different from these):


sh-4.2$ su -
sh-4.2# parted -a optimal /dev/sda   # if the partition in question is on drive /dev/sda
(parted) unit GiB                    # these units play nicely with openSUSE
(parted) print                       # display partitions on this drive with enumeration
(parted) resize 1 10 30              # resize partition #1 so it spans 10->30 GiB (i.e. newsize 20 GiB)
(parted) quit
sh-4.2# exit

Useful links:
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/parted.html
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/html_node/parted_31.html

5

On 12/01/15 06:26, LMHmedchem wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I have opensuse 12.3 on a multiboot machine. I will upgrade to 13 at
> some point but I haven’t yet. My home partition is only 10GB because I
> don’t use it very often but right now I am doing a project on opensuse
> and I need more space. The SSD that the partition is on has available
> space, but I haven’t been able to find good information on how to expand
> the partition into the unallocated space. I opened partitioner, but it
> wasn’t obvious how to use it. Is this something I should do from a CD
> like gparted or is there a method using a kde tool? I have more
> experience with gnome and that is some of the issue here.
>
> Suggestions would be appreciated.
>
> LMHmedchem
>
>

As a quick fix, as it appears it may be a short term requirement, you
could use a link to a folder that would be large enough for your
requirement (ie expanding the partition on another partition).

For ease of upgrade, I link Documents to a “common” folder on a separate
partition and test/configure the new system before linking to my data.

–
PeeGee

MSI m/b 870-C45, AMD Athlon II X3 445, 8GB, openSUSE 13.1/12.2 x86_64
dual boot + Win7 Premium in VBox
Asus m/b M2NPV-VM, AMD 64 X2 3800+, 4GB, openSUSE 11.3 x86_64/Win7
Premium dual boot

6

Also note, with out seeing the layout, you need to have the space you want to expand into at the end of the partition you are expanding. So it could be that you need to move other partitions before you can expand the one. Just having the free space is not enough it has to be in the correct relative location to the partition you are enlarging.

7

On 2015-01-12 17:06, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> Also note, with out seeing the layout, you need to have the space you
> want to expand into at the end of the partition you are expanding. So it
> could be that you need to move other partitions before you can expand
> the one. Just having the free space is not enough it has to be in the
> correct relative location to the partition you are enlarging.

Yep.

In that case, the alternative is to create another partition in that
free space, and either mount it or symlink to a directory like
“/home/myself/Extra”. It is less dangerous and faster than moving and
resizing partitions, but of course, the space is split.

Other people will immediately say to use LVM, which allows /easy/ adding
of partition space into a single space. I personally dislike the method,
as it is a layer of complexity, specially noticed when there are problems.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

8

Thanks for all of the posts. This is an odd take on the situation, but as I mentioned this is a multi boot setup and I have partition tools in windows likeEaseUS Partition Manager that I can use to expand the partition from inside windows were /home will not be mounted. The partition is ext4, but I think that the windows tools recognize that format. Is this fundamentally a bad idea?

I was thinking of a kde tool that would set the partition resize to happen on reboot. I’m not sure if there is such a thing or not. I don’t have a gparted CD that is current, but I can certainly burn a new one if that is the way to go. Is parted also run from a CD?

LMHmedchem

9

I doubt that a Windows tool will recognise or can do anything usefull to a non-Windows file system.

Please remind that the term “partitioning” is rather loosely used by most people (specialy if they have an MS Windows background). The MS-DOS partitioining (that means creating/changing entries in the partition table) can be perfectly done even on MS-DOS (I guess, never did it). But creating file systems on a partition (or other volume) is a different thing. And to shrink or expand file systems in concurrence with shrinking/expanding partitions is a task that involves thourough knowledge of the internals of the specific file system that is used by the software that must be able to do this.

There are tools that are perfectly able to manage partition tables and also can adapt file systems (of certain types, check the documentation) to changed partitions. But keep in mind that there are different actions to do here and be carefull.

10

On 2015-01-12 19:26, hcvv wrote:
>
> I doubt that a Windows tool will recognise or can do anything usefull to
> a non-Windows file system.

It is atypical, but I heard of some expensive tools that do.

> Please remind that the term “partitioning” is rather loosely used by
> most people (specialy if they have an MS Windows background). The MS-DOS
> partitioining (that means creating/changing entries in the partition
> table) can be perfectly done even on MS-DOS (I guess, never did it).

Yes, can be done in MsDos, I did it several times. In the beginning, you
needed extra tools to do it, but later even plain fdisk allowed it. Not
as clearly as the Linux fdisk, though.

What I’m unsure, too long ago, is if the MsDOS partitioner initialized
new partitions straight away, or you had to format them separately.
Windows tools typically join several tasks transparently in a single
operation, adding to the confusion on users when they have to use Linux.

> But
> creating file systems on a partition (or other volume) is a different
> thing. And to shrink or expand file systems in concurrence with
> shrinking/expanding partitions is a task that involves thourough
> knowledge of the internals of the specific file system that is used by
> the software that must be able to do this.

Yes, but there are tools in Windows that make it appear easy. I used
some back in 1998… oh, but those were not made by Microsoft. Nowdays
you can shrink the Windows “C:” disk from inside Windows, natively. At
least on some versions, like 7 or 8.

> There are tools that are perfectly able to manage partition tables and
> also can adapt file systems (of certain types, check the documentation)
> to changed partitions. But keep in mind that there are different
> actions to do here and be carefull.

Be VERY careful. :slight_smile:
I would not make any of those things without preparing a full backup.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

11

Yes.

You can use GParted from a boot USB or boot CD. Probably the easiest and safest method, since we know GParted is a stable tool.:wink:

Although, I would recommend getting Hiren’s boot disk, since it has tons of other usefull utilities you will find super handy. GParted and Partition Magic are included on the disk.

12

… and, yes, as mentioned by flymail:

First thing is backup all you data.

13

As I recall the MSDos fdisk only set the partitioning you had to do a separate format.

14

No, not a bad idea. If Ease-us recognizes ext4 (I am sure it does), that should be good enough … after backing up your system.:wink:

15

I use Ease-us backup as one of my system backup tools on a regular basis. Just one more piece of insurance.

Mostly, Clonezilla backup, Ease-us backup (from within Windows, of course), and another Clonezilla backup (3 different backups in case of failure at a crucial time).

I also use Ease-us backup on other people’s Windows-only machines before going ahead and fixing them.

16

On 2015-01-12 22:16, Fraser Bell wrote:
>
> LMHmedchem;2688607 Wrote:
>> Is this something I should do from a CD like gparted …
>
> Yes.
>
> You can use GParted from a boot USB or boot CD. Probably the easiest
> and safest method, since we know GParted is a stable tool.:wink:

I wonder if the using the gparted live is different from using gparted
program in the opensuse rescue live image :-?

pros for the later, is that it has the same kernel and libraries as the
distribution.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

17

Interesting thought, but it does not matter which of the two you use. Either one will do the job properly.

18

On 2015-01-13 00:26, Fraser Bell wrote:
> Interesting thought, but it does not matter which of the two you use.
> Either one will do the job properly.

Well, that’s good news :slight_smile:

I keep a copy of the opensuse rescue image in a stick, so no need for me
to also make another of the gparted live when doing that kind of work.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

19

The above answers give you many detailed information, the most important is that you need to create a system backup as a basic, if your system crash, you can use it to boot computer. Or backup your important files, partition or the entire disk, in one word, backup is very significant. By the windows built-in backup tool or choose one third free backup software, aomei backupper, or the software the above person referred, maybe save your many troubles no matter system backup/disk/file or partition backup. After you backup data, you also can use it to create a bootable media. Then using partition software to increase partition size, such as the one you used, or aomei partition assistant, by its extend partition wizard to extend partition, you can solve your problem. Hope you like it. Once i used the tool, very good.