Decreasing swap partition

[imranka]

Hi,

I have 1 GB RAM, so when I first installed FC8 I kept 2 GB swap partition following the thumb rule of giving twice the ram-size. Now, I see, more than 1 GB swap is not required, and in my case even 512 or less MB will be sufficient, as I checked my swap space has never been user to run all the process.

So, how can I decrease the swap space to something like 512 MB and give the extra space to my /home partition?

Thanks in advance.

[Jonathan183]

Use the PartedMagic CD, you can resize the partitions quite easily. Before you do this though check /etc/fstab to see if the disk partitions are referenced by UUID. If they are I suggest you change them to device names eg fstab on my system with mods ...

jonathan@jonathan-laptop:~$ sudo cat /etc/fstab
[sudo] password for jonathan:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# /dev/sda9
#UUID=8377fdba-c71a-47b3-8dbe-8a382ad73546 /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/sda9 /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1

# /dev/sda7
#UUID=c465dc06-83f3-447b-a424-9af4c5d2431a /home           ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/sda7 /home           ext3    defaults        0       2

# /dev/sda1
#UUID=16D9-B5D2  /media/sda1     vfat    defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/sda1  /media/sda1     vfat    defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0       1

# /dev/sda2
#UUID=A22AA8492AA81BF3 /media/sda2     ntfs    defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/sda2 /media/sda2     ntfs    defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0       1

# /dev/sda4
#UUID=0D573EEE2D99D205 /media/sda4     ntfs    defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0       1
/dev/sda4 /media/sda4     ntfs    defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0       1

# /dev/sda6
#UUID=f920145b-c614-4559-9450-0cab86cf666a /media/sda6     ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/sda6 /media/sda6     ext3    defaults        0       2

# /dev/sda8
#UUID=2cb45537-bb5c-42cb-8e47-d1859d47d2b3 /media/sda8     ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/sda8 /media/sda8     ext3    defaults        0       2

# /dev/sda5
#UUID=5989366b-39b5-489e-2ed7-231c51046da2 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/sda5 none            swap    sw              0       0

/dev/hdc        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0       0
#fusesmb /home/Mint/jonathan/Network fuse.fusesmb rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,max_read=32768 0 0
#
# mods to replace uuid with device names eg /dev/sda9 March 08
jonathan@jonathan-laptop:~$

[imranka]

Thank for the reply Jonathan.
I'll give it a try. But one thing I didn't properly understood is
[qoute]you change them to device names ...[/quote]

Can you kindly explain it once again.

Thanks once again.

[Jonathan183]

Partitions on disk can be referenced in a number of ways, for example uuid, label, device name, device id etc.

The example fstab I posted is from Linux Mint ... Mint originally created this during the install

# /dev/sda9
UUID=8377fdba-c71a-47b3-8dbe-8a382ad73546 /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1

which I replaced with this

# /dev/sda9
/dev/sda9 /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1

I have found when partitions are resized the UUID changes ... if the entries in /etc/fstab use UUID then Linux will stop working. If you post the output of

sudo cat /etc/fstab

we can post back the updates required.

[devils casper]

Fedora uses LABELs instead of UUIDs.

I would suggest you to post the contents of /etc/fstab file and output of fdisk -l command before doing anything with partitions.

cat /etc/fstab
su -
fdisk -l

[Jonathan183]

Fedora uses LABELs instead of UUIDs.

Thanks devils casper ... must have read over the FC reference.

Label should not change with resize so you should be OK without modifying fstab.

Probably worth posting output of commands devils casper indicated just to make sure before resizing.

[imranka]

here it goes:

# /etc/fstab:

LABEL=/                 /                       ext3    defaults        1 1
LABEL=/home             /home                   ext3    defaults        1 2
tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
LABEL=SWAP-sda8         swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

$ fdisk -l:

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xdde8dde8

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        2611    20972826    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            2612       19456   135307462+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5            2612       10444    62918541    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6           10445       12823    19109286   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           12824       19197    51199123+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8          19198      19455    2072353+  82  Linux swap/ Solaris

Thank you.

[devils casper]

Shrink /dev/sda8 partition and assign free space to /dev/sda7. /dev/sda7 is most probably your /home partition.
Execute df -h command to check exact used/free space of each partition.

[imranka]

Thanks devils casper,

I'll do it. I'll post if I encounter any problem.

[devils casper]

Good Luck !