partition question

[Tony Arnold]

Richard,

On 14/09/11 17:24, R Kimber wrote:

> Thanks.  I thought about using gparted, but wondered if making changes at
> that level would screw up the UUIDs and thus the mounting.
> 
> Basically, I have (don't ask me why!):-
> 
> sda5: empty
> sda6: /var, which is only 30% used
> sda7: /usr
> 
> The ideal would be to delete sda5 and to use the space to extend sda7
> but can this sort of thing be done on an existing system? Wouldn't that just
> screw everything up? Or could I work out the new UUIDs and simply edit
> fstab and live happily ever after?  Presumably I would need to do this from
> the live CD.

Hmm, not sure what it would do to the UUIDs but as you say, you can fix
that afterwards. A simple fix would be to put the paritition names back
into fstab before you start moving them and only put the UUIDs back when
you've completed everything.

Assuming the order of the partitions is as you typed them above, then I
would be tempted to delete sda5 and then move sda6 and sda7 down and
then extend sda7 to the size you need.

I would be quite cautious and do one thing at a time, delete sda5,
reboot and check, move sda6, reboot and check etc. You no doubt get the
idea.

Oh, and make sure you have complete backups before you start!

Regards,
Tony.
-- 
Tony Arnold,                        Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6093
Head of IT Security,                Fax: +44 (0) 705 344 3082
University of Manchester,           Mob: +44 (0) 773 330 0039
Manchester M13 9PL.                 Email: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk