Can't upgrade existing Ubuntu 8.04 > 8.10

[Robor]

I have my disk broken down as follows:

/boot
/
/home
/swap

The boot partition is 100MB in size (I followed a tutorial that suggested this when I couldn't boot due to a BIOS issue) and now when I try to upgrade the distro I get an error during the process that I need to free up more space. I've manually removed all previous kernels and it's still wanting 22MB more space freed up so I can continue. IIRC there is only 17MB of space used in the directory so it appears as though my only option is to somehow expand my /boot partition. Is this possible without completely repartitioning or can I shrink '/' to allow me to expand '/boot'?

 

[Nothinman]

Without knowing the physical layout of the partitions it's hard to say. It's probably possible but it would take a while since you would likely need to move the start of one of the other partitions.

 

[Robor]

Ah, so no quick workaround? I did some searching on the error and found others with the same problem but there was no quick fix. I think it would take more time to shrink and move the start of '/' than dump what little data I've got and reload the system. Needless to say, I'll definitely be making a larger '/boot' portion in the future.

 

[Nothinman]

That's really strange, my /boot is always ~100M and I've never had a problem upgrading Debian.

 

[Robor]

I never had a problem outside of this system. I'll post a list of my /etc/boot directory later. I'd do it now but I'm @ work and my 'server' system is turned off @ home. I'll try to post it tonight if I can remember.

 

[mundhra]

Originally posted by: Robor
Is this possible without completely repartitioning or can I shrink '/' to allow me to expand '/boot'?

check out the gparted live cd. it will allow you to resize your partitions without wiping them out.

i've never had a problem with any resizing i've done, but always backup important data.

you may just be able to boot from an ubuntu live cd and start gparted from the command line.