expand /boot partition?

[Derek Broughton]

chris wrote:

> I have Hardy 32 bit installed on my laptop.   Along with Vista that
> came with it.
> 
> I have it setup as the following.
> 
> /dev/sda1 - Vista (~50G) (ntfs)
> /dev/sda2 - /boot (~50M) (ext3)
> /dev/sda3 - physical for lvm that is encrypted.   This is split for /
> and swap.  (~100G total) (ext3 when mounted)
> 
> I'd like to rob some space from Vista to expand /boot to like 100M or
> even 150M.   Right now, when I get a new kernel in updates, it will
> install but fills /boot so that I can't then purge the old kernel to
> free up space which is what I ran into previously with a post a couple
> weeks ago.
> 
> Is it possible to do this?  Any pointers on how to go about doing
> this?   I'm not wanting to brick my install and have to reinstall.

That's why I stopped using a /boot partition.  Back when I had one, I think
it was only 30M :-)

Copy your entire /boot to /bootsave.

Now, go into Vista, and shrink the NTFS partition (you'll have to google for
that, because I only had to do it once...).

Boot Ubuntu with a LiveCD.  With the partition manager, delete /dev/sda2,
create new /dev/sda2 using all the free space.  Put a new FS on it.  Mount
the new FS and copy /bootsave to the new FS.  Rerun grub-install (I think -
this might not be necessary).

I was going to suggest it would be even easier to just treat /dev/sda2
as "lost" and put /boot on the root filesystem, but you've got that
encrypted LVM which I bet causes headaches...
-- 
derek