Ubuntu - resized (increased) partition size = same free space?

[Robor]

I had my laptop setup with WinXP Pro and Ubuntu in dual boot. Due to a failed dist-upgrade I had to reinstall Ubuntu and WinXP failed to boot anymore - no biggie as I very rarely booted Windows anyway. Well, I had 20GB of wasted space on my Windows partition so I wanted to reclaim it and use it for my root partiton (4GB of 8GB used). I did this:

1. Boot with Ubuntu LiveCD and load up GParted
2. Delete the 20 GB Windows partition (/dev/hda1)
3. Copy the '/' partition (/dev/hda2) to the former Windows partition
4. Reboot and edit the grub boot loader to boot from /dev/hda1 - boots successfully
5. Boot with Ubuntu LiveCD again and load up GParted
6. Delete the old 8 GB '/' partition (/dev/hda2)
7. Resize the /dev/hda1 partition to use the deleted partition (28 GB after resize) and reboot
8. Check the file system and it's got the same free space (4 GB) but now has 24 GB used?
9. Did a 'shutdown -F' to force a fsck on reboot - it ran but nothing changed
10. Boot with the LiveCD again and load up GParted - the newly resized partition shows 24 GB of 28 GB used

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Do you know what's taking up that space? Check with Kdirstat.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: SleepWalkerX
Do you know what's taking up that space? Check with Kdirstat.

I installed and ran kdirstat. It shows the expected amount of data - 3.42 GB used in the '/' partition. There's nothing listed as taking up the space, it's just being reported wrong after the resize.

 

[nweaver]

cat /dev/zero to a file till it should be "full" and then delete the file, see what happens.

 

[Robor]

I'm doing that right now... I did this: 'cat /dev/zero > /tmp/test' and it's created a file to fill the disk. I deleted it but the used and free space stayed the same. Something doesn't make sense. If I go into 'Disks Manager' (System | Administration | Disks) it reports 'Partition 1' as /dev/hda1 with no Access Path, a size of 28.00GB (Free space not available). It reports 'Partition 2' as /dev/hda2 with an access path of '/' and the size field is blank.

This is my fstab:
robor007@Home-T42-Ubuntu:/tmp$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda4 /media/hda4 ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

This is the output of a 'df':
robor007@Home-T42-Ubuntu:/tmp$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 8260248 4101508 3822984 52% /
varrun 387084 120 386964 1% /var/run
varlock 387084 0 387084 0% /var/lock
udev 387084 148 386936 1% /dev
devshm 387084 0 387084 0% /dev/shm
lrm 387084 18316 368768 5% /lib/modules/2.6.15-26-686/volatile
/dev/hda5 46899412 26821548 18172236 60% /home
/dev/hda4 90297 4127 81353 5% /media/hda4

This is my /etc/grub/menu.lst default boot:
title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-26-686
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-686 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-686
savedefault
boot

 

[Robor]

Any ideas? Still haven't figured this out... :-/

 

[kamper]

Why do you have /dev/hda2 in your fstab and df output if you supposedly moved everything to /dev/hda1? Furthermore, if you actually deleted /dev/hda2, wouldn't hda4 and hda5 move up to 3 and 4 respectively?

Given that you just reinstalled Ubuntu, wouldn't it be easier to just wipe everything a make a clean partition to install on?

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: kamper
Why do you have /dev/hda2 in your fstab and df output if you supposedly moved everything to /dev/hda1? Furthermore, if you actually deleted /dev/hda2, wouldn't hda4 and hda5 move up to 3 and 4 respectively?

Given that you just reinstalled Ubuntu, wouldn't it be easier to just wipe everything a make a clean partition to install on?

I edited my fstab and changed root to /dev/hda2 to /dev/hda1. And yes, I would think hda4 and hda5 would've moved up but they didn't. It's like it still thinks there's an hda2 there even though it was deleted with GParted (although it did error).

I don't want to reload because I've got a lot of additional apps installed and it would take hours/days to reload from scratch. Also, it took me forever to get Enlightenment (E17) installed on here.

Here's my fstab and df output now:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 8260248 4063192 3861300 52% /
varrun 387084 120 386964 1% /var/run
varlock 387084 0 387084 0% /var/lock
udev 387084 148 386936 1% /dev
devshm 387084 0 387084 0% /dev/shm
lrm 387084 18316 368768 5% /lib/modules/2.6.15-26-686/volatile
/dev/hda5 46899412 26839396 18154388 60% /home
/dev/hda4 90297 4127 81353 5% /media/hda4

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda4 /media/hda4 ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

Edit: Booting with the Ubuntu LiveCD and running GParted does not show an hda2

 

[kamper]

Looks like the partition size has been changed, but the filesystem itself hasn't been enlarged. Note that df ("df -h" is nicer to look at) only reports 8G of space (not 28). I've never used Gparted, but can you poke around in it and see if there are options for resizing an actual filesystem?

Otherwise, maybe you could tar up your /, stash it somewhere, blow away your partitions, recreate them, and untar. You might want to unmount /home and /media/hda4 first, and get the opinion of someone who knows what they're talking about 🙂

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: kamper
Looks like the partition size has been changed, but the filesystem itself hasn't been enlarged. Note that df ("df -h" is nicer to look at) only reports 8G of space (not 28). I've never used Gparted, but can you poke around in it and see if there are options for resizing an actual filesystem?

Otherwise, maybe you could tar up your /, stash it somewhere, blow away your partitions, recreate them, and untar. You might want to unmount /home and /media/hda4 first, and get the opinion of someone who knows what they're talking about 🙂

Your post just reminded me of something... I had this happen before. Yes, I'm an idiot!

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=34&threadid=1908040&enterthread=y