New to Linux and trying out openSUSE 11.1 with KDE4. I allowed the installer to decide on partitioning but don’t like the end result, so I want to shrink the final partition (/home), move it to the end of the disk, and then expand the preceding partition (/root)
Using the live CD the first step is no problem, but I can see no option afterwards that allows me to move the partition up into the vacated space.
Assume I know next to nothing about Linux please, but experienced with Windows.
Just a quick query. /root is root’s home folder. I presume you mean / or the root partition. If so, I am surprised you want to expand it; it is unusual to need more than 10G for / but perhaps you have a special need for a much larger / partition.
Thanks for the reply. SUSE is having to share my laptop’s 80GB hard disk with XP, VistaPE, and a stack of data, so I only allocated 10GB in total, of which 5GB was allocated to the root partition and 4.6GB to /home. It isn’t enough, so I want to reallocate 2GB to the root partition.
Is it doable?
If it’s a new install then I suggest just reinstalling it and doing a manual partition setup the way you want it. If not and you want to keep everything intact it could be quite difficult. Your problem is you can’t extend your root partition because the /home partition begins where root ends. you may be able to resize the last windows partition before the linux root partition down by 2 gig and then move the beginning of the root partition back but I’ve never tried it and couldn’t tell you whether or not that is even possible. The other way to do it would be back up the data in your home partition, delete it, resize your root partition up 2 gig and then reassign the remaining 3 gig for /home.
If you are struggling to see how to do this with the yast partitioner then download gparted through yast -> software management. It is very easy and intuitive and if you know how to partition disks you will find it very easy. I’m not sure if your current suse installation is functional, but if not then you can still download and use gparted from within the liveCD environment, it just won’t be there after shutdown for obvious reasons.
I could do that of course, but shrinking and bumping up the home partition would be trivial with something like Disk Director in Windows. I can’t believe it’s not so in Linux. It isn’t a fresh install and this would be a bit of a chore.
Your problem is you can’t extend your root partition because the /home partition begins where root ends. you may be able to resize the last windows partition before the linux root partition down by 2 gig and then move the beginning of the root partition back but I’ve never tried it and couldn’t tell you whether or not that is even possible.
Yast does not appear to be able to move partitions either up or down. I can’t bump home up and, as far as I can see, I can’t move root down however I resize the adjacent partitions. Pretty unsatisfactory imo.
The other way to do it would be back up the data in your home partition, delete it, resize your root partition up 2 gig and then reassign the remaining 3 gig for /home.
I don’t have the room
If you are struggling to see how to do this with the yast partitioner then download gparted through yast -> software management. It is very easy and intuitive and if you know how to partition disks you will find it very easy. I’m not sure if your current suse installation is functional, but if not then you can still download and use gparted from within the liveCD environment, it just won’t be there after shutdown for obvious reasons.
I’ve got gparted but not sure it can handle the new 256 byte i-node Ext3 partitions in v11. My SUSE is fully operational, so I’ll check out the latest version - space permitting!
The problem would appear to be what I said above - the new 256 byte i-node format used in SUSE 11.1 is not catered for either in Yast or in the current version of Gparted. D/loaded the latest Gparted live CD but the move function does not work on the Ext3 partitions, though resize down does. Resize up does not, even though there is unallocated space above.