[aklug] rearranging a partition table

From: barsalou <barjunk@attglobal.net>
Date: Fri Dec 14 2012 - 20:31:09 AKST

While playing with a VM (VirtualBox 4.x), I ran out of room on the drive.

Since this VM was just a version I was using to goof around, I
thought, what the heck, let's try to extend it.

Using VboxManage I was able to make the vdi extend from 15G to 25G.

Of course, this doesn't fix the problem because the existing
partitions only extended to the 15G mark...so I had to move them.

This was fairly strait forward because there were only two partitions,
swap and everything else.

Swap was configured on an extended partion as partition 5.

Also, I wanted to do this on the system that was currently mounted..to
see what sorts of problems I could get myself into... :)

Because the goal was to not trash the VM, I took it careful by
following these general steps.

Wrote down the existing partition table information.
Turned off Swap
Deleted the extended partition(2) and the swap partition(5).
wrote the new table
rebooted so the system would be using the new partition table

everything OK so far, rebooted fine (didn't even have to modify /etc/fstab)

Now the scary part...I removed the remaining partition(1) and
recreated it to utilize more of the newly configured space. Being
careful to start it at the exact same starting point as was initially
configured.

Next, the extended partition(2) and the swap partition(5) were recreated.

Wrote the new partition table and rebooted again....fingers crossed.

Everything came back up without an issue after a mkswap the new swap
partition and adding it back to the /etc/fstab (the UUID had changed)

Back in business!

It isn't clear if a real machine would behave similarly, but it was an
exciting exercise just the same.

It would be great to hear about other folks experiences and solutions.

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Received on Fri Dec 14 20:31:18 2012

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