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Guillaume Coté
Asked: 2011-01-25 08:24:16 +0800 CST

How do you resize a live partition?

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I saw the question : Is it possible (aka safe) to resize a partition while the system is running?

Short answer : yes, but they don't explain how. How do I resize my partition while the system is running. Gparted doesn't offer me other option that mouting the partition.

Thanks

partitioning

3 Answers

  1. It is filesystem and partition dependant, different flesystems and partitions will use different methods. AFAIK it's usually used on lvm partitions. If you are using Gparted, the safe thing to do is to umount it first.

    Usually you use lvextend and resizefs in lvm partitions. You can find more info on their man pages. Again it's not a good idea to do with "normal" partitions.

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  2. First you have to expand the underlying block device. If you are using a conventional partition on a single hard disk, this is not possible. LVM and mdadm can expand the block device, then you can run resize2fs to expand the fs ( assuming it is ext[234] ).

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  3. It really depends on the filesystem you are using but in most cases the answer is to use a livecd (Since it comes with gparted) but it is highly NOT recommended to resize a mounted, usable partition.

    Please note that (at the time I'm speaking ubuntu 11.10 "Gparted 0.8.1") Gparted can't manage partition in the LVM it self...

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