Extending root partition

[kidzik]

I have serwer Debian with my website. My provider splited the disc into 5GB partition for / and 495GB partition for /var
Everything was going ok for over two years but now I don't have enough memory on /
I'd like to increase the partition bu the problem is that /var is just next to it so I can't easly change the end of the first one.

I need some safe solution... It might be even just shrinking partition for /var, adding new one after if it helps anyhow (I have about 450GB free memory).

Some outputs

# df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              5201536   5173904         0 100% /
tmpfs                  1023464         0   1023464   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                     10240      2672      7568  27% /dev
tmpfs                  1023464         0   1023464   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda2            478812280  10336484 444345032   3% /var
overflow                  1024         4      1020   1% /tmp

# parted print
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: ATA ST3500418AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system     Flags
 1      512B    5369MB  5369MB  primary  ext3            boot
 2      5369MB  500GB   494GB   primary  ext3
 3      500GB   500GB   538MB   primary  linux-swap(v1)

Regards,
Łukasz Kidziński

[Rubberman]

To do this, you need to backup the contents of /var and /, then reduce the partition size (and starting block) of /var, extend the size of /, use resize2fs to resize /, mkfs.ext2 to reinitialize /var, then restore the data to /var. The backup of / is a precaution in case the resize operation fails for some reason and you have to reinitialize / completely.

Alternatively, you can extend / to use the entire disc, change /etc/fstab to not mount /var, and make /var part of the root / file system, restoring the data there after resizing /.

[kidzik]

Thank you very much for this answer. I will try to do it with strong focus on the backup part