[Nottingham] Partition resizing

[Duncan Fyfe]

On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 07:05 +0000, Danny King wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have run out of space on my root partition and have decided to
> attempt to resize it. I have a ~8 gig / partition and a ~50gig ntfs
> partition (and another ntfs partition with Windows on). I wonder,
> would the following work?
> 
> 1. Back up all the data on / into a .tar.gz (should I do this in a
> different way?) and place it onto an external hard drive
> 2. Do the same for the NTFS partition (there's only a gig of stuff on there)
> 3. Boot a liveCD and delete both partitions, then add a 15 gig /
> partition and a 43 gig ntfs one.
> 4. Copy the original data from the external hard drive onto the two
> new partitions
> 5. Profit?
> 
Sorry to arrive late to the party.
If you mount the NTFS partition from linux anyway and don't want much
hassle, pick on a large write-little linux directory (/usr/share
or /usr/share/doc are usually a good place to start).  Move the contents
of the directory to somewhere on the NTFS partition then bind mount (man
(8) mount) the somewhere to /usr/share.

Usually best done as (as root/using sudo):
	rsync -a /usr/share/ /an/ntfs/shomewhere
	mv /usr/share /usr/share.backup
	mkdir /usr/share
	mount --bind /an/ntfs/shomewhere /usr/share
	<edit fstab to include to new bind mount>
	#Once you've proved it works over a reboot
	rm -rf /usr/share.backup

Have fun,
Duncan