From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jul 17 19:55:49 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id TAA08559 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Fri, 17 Jul 1998 19:55:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (freebie.lemis.com [139.130.136.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id TAA08554 for ; Fri, 17 Jul 1998 19:55:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@freebie.lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.9.1/8.9.0) id MAA20069; Sat, 18 Jul 1998 12:25:10 +0930 (CST) Message-ID: <19980718122510.E337@freebie.lemis.com> Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 12:25:10 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: Spidey , Julian Elischer Cc: Question=answer Subject: Re: Melting 2 partitions into 1, again References: <356DBD66.167EB0E7@whistle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1i In-Reply-To: ; from Spidey on Fri, Jul 17, 1998 at 08:00:44AM -0400 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Friday, 17 July 1998 at 8:00:44 -0400, Spidey wrote: > Hi! > > I must thank you if haven't already for the help you gave me on partition > handling. I know it's been a while but I still need your help. > > Remember my HD settings? No. Do you really expect us to? > 1 GB DOS > 500 MB Free > 1750 MB FBSD > > Now I wish to fit in the 500 MB that is before the FBSD. Is it a different > procedure? >From what? > If I would try, I would do fdisk to change to starting block, reboot > as -s, do disklabel to reflect the changes. Remember that there are two levels of hierarchy involved here. So far you've been talking about the Microsoft partition table level (fdisk/FDISK). disklabel refers to the structure within one of those slices. If you add stuff at the end, fine, the offsets don't change. But if you add the free partition at the beginning, your disklabel will point 500 MB further forward on the disk, and won't find the same data. There is a way to solve this problem, but it definitely falls into the "don't try this at home" category. 1. You remove partition 2 and modify partition 3 so that it starts 500 MB earlier on *and* is 500 MB longer. 2. You go into disklabel and add 500 MB to the offsets of each slice. You may need to be in single-user mode to do this, in which case you may also need to boot from a different system--say, a PicoBSD boot floppy. I haven't tried this, and there are multiple opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot with this method. If you do try it, you *must* first make a complete backup. There's a very good chance of losing all your data while doing it. > BTW, once I fitted the new sizes, is it possible to change the respective > partition sizes in FBSD itself, later? (let's say I need more /var space?) Currently, only if you're prepared to re-newfs the file system. There are some ideas afoot to make UFS file systems expandible, but they haven't been implemented yet. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message