increase /home size from root folder

Question

The following is my partition in linux (ubuntu)

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7        42G   11G   29G  29% /
udev            2.0G  4.0K  2.0G   1% /dev
tmpfs           2.0G   80K  2.0G   1% /tmp
tmpfs           802M  920K  801M   1% /run
none            5.0M  8.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
none            2.0G  5.0M  2.0G   1% /run/shm
cgroup          2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda8       9.2G  8.4G  319M  97% /home

I need to increase my /home folders size. As I already have a lot of space (29G) in "/" . Is there any way to transfer / use that space in /home directory ?

Solution

There is a convenient utility called gparted that can do that for you with a minimum hassle. You will have to copy a live distro, like Ubuntu, to a USB stick, boot from it, choose Try Ubuntu without installing it, and install gparted:

  sudo apt-get install gparted
  sudo gparted

which will open the GUI of the program. The reason why you have to do it from a stick is that you cannot alter a live partition (or you can, under special circumstances, but it safer to do it this way). Then you will have to:

1) first, shrink /dev/sda7 to your intended size, which will leave some room free;

2) second, expand /dev/sda8 to include the newly liberated space.

Reboot from HDD, you are done.

Should you have any problem with rebooting, use the USB stick one again to boot from it, install Boot-Repair as per the instructions here, and follow these instructions to the end.

Comments

[terdon]

@Lawrence unfortunately, gparted live is no longer free.

[Rahul]

Is there a possibility that I will lose my data ?

[MariusMatutiae]

@Rahul You should always back up your data, in this kind of operatins. There is always a small chance that something go seriously awry.