On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 12:15:03PM -0600, Chad Perrin
wrote:
> I have need to alter some partition sizes on a (laptop)
system I use
> daily, with FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE installed. Are there
tools you'd
> recommend for this, that should be stable and not prone
to hosing up my
> filesystems? In particular, I probably don't need to
shrink any
> partitions -- only grow them -- but I'm not sure how I
want to handle
> this at this time. I worry a bit about using some
Linux LiveCD's
> partition management tools on a FreeBSD system. Any
advice would be
> appreciated.
First, is there a strong reason that you must change the
partition sizes?
Could you not instead just move some directories and make
soft links
(Symbolic Links) from the old location to the new? This
can solve
most issues with much less hassle.
Second, are you for sure meaning partition and not slice in
FreeBSD
terms? If you mean slices, then there is no reasonable way
other
than to back things up - using dump - and rebuild things and
then
restore data.
If you mean FreeBSD partitions, then it is possible you
could use
a utility called growfs. But, it requires adjacent space to
grow
in to. You would have to free space in the partition that
is next
higher in address space. That would mean also backing that
partition
up and blowing it away, growing the lower partition and
creating the
higher one anew. Given all that trouble - and room for
error, it
might be easier just to back up each partition/file system
with a
reliable dump (check it before nuking things) and then
rebuilding
the file systems from scratch using the fixit CD and then
restoring
each file system.
If you are referring to FreeBSD partitions (and not MS
partitions which
FreeBSD calls slices), then after making dumps of each file
system (except
/tmp - don't bother with it) you boot the install CD,
select the fixit
shell, use disklabel to remake partitions and newfs to build
the
file systems. Make temporary mount pointss (which really
exist in a
memory file system, but you don't care about that) in the
fixit's root
and then cd in to each and restore the appropriate dump in
to it with
a 'restore -rf ' Since you would, in this case be
restoring a root
that you were already using, if you do not change the number
and names
of partitions/file systems - just sizes, such things as
/etc/fstab
and rc.conf, etc would already be there and set up as you
need them, so
just reboot when all the restores are done. If you change
any of the
partitions so that mount information needs to be redone,
then you will
want to go to that /etc/fstab in the temporarily mounted
restored root
file system and modify it to suit the new situation. Then
reboot.
I think that if moving a directory and creating a symlink,
as in my first
comment above, will not do the trick for you, then doing the
complete dump
and rebuild of partitions/file systems is a better bet that
growfs. Growfs
is really more suitable for those situations where a person
left a large
glob of space un the slice unallocated in any partition,
thinking another
use was to be put to it later but now wants to incorporate
that glob in
to the partition next to it. It is not really designed for
moving stuff
around in the middle of things. But you can try it.
Third, Anyway, don't try using LINUX tools to manipulate
the FreeBSD partitions. There is too much difference.
////jerry
>
> --
> CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org
]
> John W. Russell: "People point. Sometimes that's
just easier. They also use
> words. Sometimes that's just easier. For the same
reasons that pointing has
> not made words obsolete, there will always be command
lines."
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