Resizing a reiserfs partition...

[fyrephlie]

on this system i have a 160 gb /dev/hda ... it is /dev/hda1 1gb linux-swap .... /dev/hda2 EVERYTHING ELSE reiserfs. I really want to resize the reiserfs partition and make a few smaller partitions for dual / triple / quadruple booting etc. ... without having to lose all the data on the drive (yes i understand that resizing does expose me to this risk anyway)... (i was so damn eager to get into this distro i just let it do its thing... it picked reiserfs and nuked the drive and took it all for itself)

google has not helped me. (but diid lead me to several REALLY old forum posts from several other sites asking similar questions on or about "October 8th 1974" (i.e. really old posts)

i have run qtparted off the knoppix livecd but for some reason it will not allow me to resize (oh and for some reason it says /dev/hda is busy even though its not even mounted, which is the point of a ramdisk i thought).

i started the process in parted... but text based partitioning scares the bejesus out of me (is it bytes / cylinders / did i forget a 0 / wait was that in mb? oh crap!) and it did seem as tho it was going to let me do it... although i typed resize 2 and it started the process of asking me how much where and when and i chickened out and ran away like a coward.

so ... does anyone know how i can do this?

p.s. i did try resize_resierfs -s -20G it ran for about 10 minutes... told me it was successful then amazingly.... nothing happened. EVERYTHING (i run like 4 or 5 terminal sessions at a time to see where i've been and what im doing cause im still new) EVERYTHING was exactly the same (cylinder sizes and start/end points).

insight gladly welcomed

happy computing!

p.p.s please don't just respond with 'reformat and start over' i know i can do that... however if someone knows of a great backup util to go back to this distro and these settings after i reformat and resize i would welcome that too

thanks
wow i type a lot for no reason.

[smolloy]

Have you tried the partitioner in yast?? I've used it quite a few times and everything turned out well. It doesn't have the pretty little bar at the top to show you how your hard drive is arranged, but it does the job!!

I'm intrigued as to how people were posting things in online forums in 1974! Seems like a glitch in the space-time continuum to me!!

[fyrephlie]

I'm intrigued as to how people were posting things in online forums in 1974! Seems like a glitch in the space-time continuum to me!!

yeah ... well ... in 1764 sir reginald of barclay developed the first bbs system (he later became an anarchist and began phreaking the phone system of imperial england...) it was all downhill from there. when the internet was first developed in the late 1800's, forums became common place shortly thereafter... it was all well established by the mid 70's!

now ... partioner is a little confusing to me... is says ... /dev/hda is basically empty and unused... i dunno if i am just not reading the info right ... but

Disk /dev/hda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 129 1036161 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda2 * 130 19457 155252160 83 Linux

is the output of fdisk... but partioner seems to think i have no primary partions ...

[fyrephlie]

no answer on that one eh?

[jaboua]

Fdisk sees the partitions /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2

btw, I think reiserfs resizer only resize the filesystem, not the partition... To resize the partition, maybe you can use fdisk/cfdisk, parted/qtparted or similar, never done it thought. Then you resize the filesystem.

[fyrephlie]

btw, I think reiserfs resizer only resize the filesystem, not the partition...

yeah i'm figuring that out... i haven't a lot of experience in using so many different file systesm (dos fat16 fat32 ntfs only) so i am having to learn this stuff ... but i am catching on