From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Mar 13 04:29:40 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AA92316A4CE for ; Sat, 13 Mar 2004 04:29:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp.infracaninophile.co.uk (happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk [81.2.69.218]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 63E4243D1D for ; Sat, 13 Mar 2004 04:29:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: from happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk (localhost.infracaninophile.co.uk [IPv6:::1])i2DCTXqD022771 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Sat, 13 Mar 2004 12:29:33 GMT (envelope-from matthew@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk) Received: (from matthew@localhost)id i2DCTXTI022770 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sat, 13 Mar 2004 12:29:33 GMT (envelope-from matthew) Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 12:29:33 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20040313122933.GC98015@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> Mail-Followup-To: Matthew Seaman , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20040312184702.GA16477@Dark-Age.local> <200403121922.i2CJMLa19763@clunix.cl.msu.edu> <20040312230210.GC16477@Dark-Age.local> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="WfZ7S8PLGjBY9Voh" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040312230210.GC16477@Dark-Age.local> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=2.63 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk X-Virus-Scanned: clamd / ClamAV version devel-20040304, clamav-milter version 0.67j Subject: Re: resizing partitions in the same slice X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 12:29:40 -0000 --WfZ7S8PLGjBY9Voh Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 05:02:10PM -0600, Eugene Lee wrote: =20 > I'm a little surprised. I would think that resizing partitions is a > common request, that the idea of growing one partition while shrinking > another is not a new or rare notion. Can anyone else share their views > or experiences? The list archives contain few comments on the subject. Absolutely. This is something that there is a great deal of pent up demand for. Consequently growfs(8) exists, which can extend a filesystem. Normally growfs(8) is used in a RAID environment, where extra space can be added to a slice relatively easily. However, it can certainly be used on a regular harddrive. You'll need to re-do the partitioning as a separate job, and be very careful about the whole job, as a misstep will possibly trash the whole disk. While growfs(8) does it's job very well, there's some obvious areas where it's functionality could be extended. The first would be a mechanism for being able to run growfs on a mounted filesystem. That's hugely important for fileservers with very large filesystems and hundreds of network clients. Models for how to do this already exist: for instance see the lockfs(1M) implementation from Solaris: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=3Dlockfs&apropos=3D0&sektion= =3D0&manpath=3DSunOS+5.9&format=3Dhtml The other obvious extension is 'shrinkfs' which at the moment can only be achieved by backing up the partition and restoring it into a smaller space. The problem with shrinkfs is that it requires shifting the on-disk data into a smaller region, something which is intrinsically much more difficult than just providing an extra chunk of empty space. As far as I know, no one has yet managed to produce a working shrinkfs implementation under any sort of Unix or Unix derived system. Cheers, Matthew --=20 Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks Savill Way PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK --WfZ7S8PLGjBY9Voh Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (FreeBSD) iD4DBQFAUv6tdtESqEQa7a0RAkULAJoCmkZcP6MPfpIpjpYU8mx6iUdEsgCY7HWA pmqF1oOUKkVnrjHpEjzkOw== =aNm/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --WfZ7S8PLGjBY9Voh--