How to divide a partition into two parts?

[computerophil]

Resize partitions from a live CD.

It is even more secure doing it from a liveCD.
As you are working out of ram and not working on harddisk there is only one writing prozess (the one op repartitioning and formatating)

Trying to resize a live filesystem may be possible but is not recommended.

First I never said resize a live filesystem - and please if you are confused don't confuse others by saying not reccommended when you even don't know what it is spoken about.

In any case backup data - although partition resize usually works there are sometimes problems.

[vickey_20]

Trying to resize a live filesystem may be possible but is not recommended

The partition can never be performed on a filesystem that is currently mounted. It is mandatory to umount the partition and then perform the partitioning or resizing or whatever else.

[vickey_20]

parted command line utility comes inbuilt in most of the distroy. If you prefer not downloading and manually doing the parition is possilbe using parted . Here is a quick howto Partitioning with parted

[Lakshmipathi]

You have already mentioned about this How To Resize ext3 Partitions Without Losing Data | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

I have tried this before and it worked for me But Again I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!!!!

Since you already mentioned /home (which is a separate partition) is doesn't contain impartant data,you can try this,if you have large free space left with your /home.

Post your output of
fdisk -l /dev/sda

and then
df -h /home

[NewinLinux]

Hi All,
Seeing the complexity of this doing in command line( I am new), I decided to do it by GParted as all of you suggested at first. I saw that I have 1 GB free space as "unallocated", I tried to create a new partition.But it said that I need to create an extended partition first and for doing this, I will need to delete a primary partition ! Now the things become complex for me again

Here is how my partitions look:

device boot start End Blocks id system

/dev/sda1 1 262 2104483+ 82 Linux swap/solaris

/dev/sda2 * 265 2743 19928632 83 Linux

/dev/sda3 2874 8748 47190937 83 Linux

/dev/sda4 8749 9720 7807590 83 Linux


Here is how it is mounted
/dev/sda1 swap

/dev/sda2 /

/dev/sda3 /home (I want to make it smaller and create one extra partition out of it)

/dev/sda4 /mnt/point1 (This is another Distro Linux from scratch.)

[NewinLinux]

Hi,
I have made the /home partition smaller using GParted. But when I tried to create one more partition, it tells me that it cannot create more than 4 primary partitions. I need one more partition.What should I do now?

[devils casper]

Its not possible to create more than 4 Primary Partitions. Delete last Primary Partition (/dev/sda4 ) and create an Extended Partition using GParted. You can create 60+ Logical Partitions inside Extended Partition.

[NewinLinux]

But, I can't delete /dev/sda4 . That is my LFS 6.4. Can I delete the /dev/sda3 , my /home partition and make an extended one?

[devils casper]

Yes, you can delete it and create an Extended Partition. Back up data of /home partition to new location before doing that.
You have to edit /etc/fstab file to boot other distro after create new partition.

Execute this to copy data from /home partition,

cp -a <path of /home> < new_location>

[NewinLinux]

You told that "You have to edit /etc/fstab file to boot other distro after create new partition."
Why should I do it(I am deleting /home and making it again !) and what will I have to write in the /etc/fstab file?

How will the structure of my filesystem look like? Will it be like this :

/dev/sda1 swap

/dev/sda2 /

/dev/sda3 /home (extended)

/dev/sda4 /mnt/point1

/dev/sda5 /embedded (logical) (This is my plan of new partition once it is made)


Or will it be different?