How to increase the size of / with unallocated hdd space

Question

So, I had run out of space on / (which was initially 9.3 GB). So I had some un-allocated space on my hdd (/dev/sda) that I wanted to assign to the / partition, which is also: /dev/sda1.

For reference this is how my HDD is laid out:

→ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00081f45

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048    19531775     9764864   83  Linux
/dev/sda2        19533822   625141759   302803969    5  Extended
/dev/sda5        19533824    34172927     7319552   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6        34174976   443774975   204800000   83  Linux


→ sudo sfdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 38913 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start     End   #cyls    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *      0+   1215-   1216-   9764864   83  Linux
/dev/sda2       1215+  38913-  37698- 302803969    5  Extended
/dev/sda3          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/sda4          0       -       0          0    0  Empty
/dev/sda5       1215+   2127-    912-   7319552   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6       2127+  27623-  25497- 204800000   83  Linux

There is approximately 85~90 GB that is available to be allocated to my / partition.

Edit: I have gone for option two, and created a partition: /dev/sda7

→ sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sda
Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors

/dev/sda1 : start=     2048, size= 19529728, Id=83, bootable
/dev/sda2 : start= 19533822, size=605607938, Id= 5
/dev/sda3 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0
/dev/sda4 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0
/dev/sda5 : start= 19533824, size= 14639104, Id=82
/dev/sda6 : start= 34174976, size=409600000, Id=83
/dev/sda7 : start=443777024, size=181364736, Id=83

Solution 1

Linux provide many partitioning tools to re-size or shrink the partition that also without any data loss,It is possible to resize a partition using Gparted in a easy and a convenient way.As its a opensource and free download.

To modify the partition with Gparted, it has to be downloaded then burned into a blank CD. This CD will be used as a bootable CD in order to resize the partition on Linux.

Follow these easy instructions to resize a partition using Gparted on Linux without losing any data. The process may take some time to complete.... you can go through this page for whole description and re-sizing...

Happy to help

Solution 2

That's not going to be easy. With classical partitions you need consecutive free space. You cannot add it up all over the disk.

The fun gets even bigger by your extended partition beginning directly after the first one. There are two possibilities:

1. extend the partition (in a narrower sense; limited to adding about 7GiB)
2. create a bigger partition in the free space, copy the contents of / and use sda1 for something different.

extending the partition

You have to delete sda5 (and create a new partition for swap in the free space) and change the beginning of the extended partition and the end of sda1.

You should save the output of sfdisk -d /dev/sda to a file (backup this to some external storage!) and adapt the values. You may add that output to your question, then we can help you with that.

Comments

[Hauke Laging]

That's not a disk layout. E.g. fdisk -l and sfdisk -l tell you the disk layout. What do you need a 1K(??) partition for?

[Rivasa]

@HaukeLaging, I have no idea why it's actually there.

[Rivasa]

@HaukeLaging, updated with fdisk and sfdisk.

[Rivasa]

so, I've created a new partition which is /dev/sda7 I have added the output of the command (also, i would prefer option 2)

[Hauke Laging]

@Link Then (1) boot a different system, (2) run the respective mkfs on the new partition, (3) mount the old and the new partition, (4) cp -a /mnt/old/. /mnt/new, (5) adapt /etc/fstab, (6) adapt the bootloader (the root=... parameter for the kernel).

[Rivasa]

I'm really sorry, but i'm kinda newbie when it comes to some of this stuff, if you don't mind, could you put it in a bit more detail on what to do in the answer?

[Hauke Laging]

@Link I am not going to write a book as an answer. If you need help then you should ask specifically. There is a very similar question. This answer may help you: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/49775/move-to-a-new-partiti‌​on/…