Resizing reiserfs

petrjanda · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 3:41 pm Post subject: Resizing reiserfs

ok.. ive read some topics here about resizing reiserfs partitions..but i dont know which way to do it is safe. Basically ive got about 8gb left after my root partition hdb3, and i want to use out the remaining space.
Whats the safest way to do it?
Please write it in detailed steps, i dont want to risk losing all my data...
Thanks anyone who helps me.

Vanquirius · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 4:27 pm Post subject:

For one thing, you must have a backup of your important stuff. No matter how good the method for resizing a partition is, it is always quite risky.

I've successfully resized a couple of rather large ReiserFS partitions (from 30Gb to 34Gb and from 40Gb to 120Gb) using qtparted, a frontend to many partition utilities. I think it uses resize_reiserfs to resize ReiserFS partitions.
It's included in SysRescCD.

I believe the safest method for doing this is booting off the CD, running qtparted and using its GUI to resize your partition.

After this, you can reboot. fsck.reiserfs will complain about the file system being altered, and will run a check on your filesystem. Generally, after this you're good to go.
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Hello.

Ateo · Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 10:09 pm Post subject:

reiserfsprogs comes with a utility to resize drives. I've used it in the past but wasn't happy with the outcome. I ended up deleting my partitions and recreating them. I took a risk with deleting and recreating the partitions because I could have cut data. However, I didn't (luckily) since you don't lose data, with fdisk, from a deleted partition until you write the table.

Resizing disks is sometimes a tedious process because not only do you have to resize drive space (in Bytes), but you must also resize the block size of the drive.

I ended up reinstalling my system simply because the drive that I was dealing with was a small, 8GB drive that wasn't worth my effort.

I'm sure you have reiserfsprogs installed. If you don't, emerge reiserfsprogs. Then do man resize_reiserfs for more information. I was able to successfully resize stuff on my first attempt. It's pretty easy, just pay attention to what you do...

Don't forget to back your shit up and don't forget to run fsck.reiserfs on the partitions you resized. =)

dogshu · Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2004 3:33 pm Post subject:

I tried to use QTParted once to resize a reiserfs partition... and it trashed it.

I have used resize_reiserfs many times, and its always worked perfectly. Its incredibly easy to use if you're enlarging a partition, you just say "resize_reiserfs /dev/partition" and it automatically determines the size it should make the filesystem.