How do I resize the partition of a Ubuntu-server?

Question

Is there an easy way to decrease the disk volume on a Ubuntu server?

I run a virtual environment and need to decrease my disk volume since I'm running out of space in my non virtual environment.

Answer 1

You will need to first resize the filesystem, then the partition table, and then tell the virtual hypervisor to resize its own disk. As somebody else stated, booting it in a liveCD and then using gparted is VERY easy to do. In fact its the only way to do it if you have the filesystem mounted, which will always be the case for your root filesystem.

If you just want to resize /home or some other thing you can unmount..

umount /dev/sda4

parted will show you the start/stop with parted -l

Model: ATA Hitachi HTS54323 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End    Size    File system     Name                  Flags
 1      20.5kB  210MB  210MB   fat32           EFI System Partition  boot
 2      210MB   160GB  160GB   hfs+            Mac HD
 3      160GB   162GB  2000MB  linux-swap(v1)
 4      162GB   320GB  158GB   ext4

If I wanted to resize /dev/sda4:

parted resize /dev/vda1 162GB 300GB

Then I'd just have to tell the virtual disk provider to shrink its disk to the appropriate size.

Note that this is fairly dangerous, so backup any important data.

Answer 2

I think you will have to use resize2fs.

You will have to:
1. boot from a livecd,
2. then set the partiotion as ext2, 3. and run something like resize2fs /dev/sda1 8000M.

Here is a more extensive step by step instructions.

Answer 3

I want to extend my /boot partition.

df -h (output)

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda6 581G 251G 301G 46% / udev 2.9G 4.0K 2.9G 1% /dev tmpfs 1.2G 676K 1.2G 1% /run none 5.0M 8.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock none 2.9G 140K 2.9G 1% /run/shm /dev/sda1 92M 72M 15M 83% /boot

I want to expand my /boot partition to 500MB. Welcome any kind of help/direction.

Thanks & regards, spidy

Answer 4

If you meant you want to resize your filesystem which is probably ext* have a look at this guide http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_resizing_ext3_partitions

If you meant you want to reduce your disk usage by removing temporary and cache data have a look at this: http://www.webupd8.org/2009/04/clean-unnecessary-temporarily-files-in.html

Answer 5

Beside resizing your partition using a LiveCD and gparted you could change the amount of space reserved by root (in percent):

sudo tune2fs -m 10 /dev/sda1

But this only affects non root user!

You can also create quotas for specific users using the quota utility (User Quotas with Ubuntu)