Grow a filesystem (was: Fix a problem)

[James Michael Fultz]

* "Karl F. Larsen" <klarsen1 at gmail.com> [2009-09-29 17:47 -0600]:
>I have a /dev/sda5 that has all my /home/karl things on it 
>and it is 85% full. I was going to go over the size if I get a 
>new system to d/l or other such things. 
> 
>So I made /dev/sda12 twice as large and the used dd to put 
>/dev/sda5 on /dev/sda12. It did but, it made /dev/sda12 
>smaller, in fact the same size as /dev/sda5. 

Using dd to copy the filesystem to a new partition does only 
that.  The filesystem is the same size as before, though there is 
more space on the new partition for the filesystem to grow.  
GParted (System>Administration>Partition Editor) can be used to 
grow supported filesystems as well as resize2fs for an ext3 
filesystem.

>I had to go back to my Live/CD and make /dev/sda12 a tiny bit 
>smaller with the Partioner and then it shows up being much 
>larger at last. 
> 
>So now it shows the large size of /dev/sda12 with $df -h as 
>twice as large as /dev/sda5 and all is well. 
> 
>You don't care? I do. 

Looks like using the Partition Editor performed a resize on the 
filesystem which had not been done earlier.