Boot partition problem

[Khriz]

Hi,

I have a problem with the partitions of the hda disk. I made a 16MB boot partition at the beginning of the device, now when a new kernel is installed by adept updater I get an error message because the partition doesn't have enough space left.

I have the root partition next to the boot partition, can I do something to make bigger the boot partition. I thought of doing a complete backup, merge boot and root partitions and restore in the new merged partition.

Do you think is a good idea? Can you give me more ideas?


Thanks,
Khriz

[javierrivera]

Re: Boot partition problem

You can try to boot from a liveCD and try to resiza the partitions with Qtparted, GParted or some other program.

If you have a Kunbuntu liveCD try to launch from it and use QtParted.

Please, make a backup copy of your data before as resizing partitions is always dangerous.

BTW my /boot partitions are around 800 Mb.

Javier.

[Khriz]

Re: Boot partition problem

I'm thinking a way to tell grub that the boot directory is not in the 16MB partition, that way, although I will lost 16MB, will not need to re-partition de disk.

Do you know how can I do that?

[javierrivera]

Re: Boot partition problem

Yes.

First, copy all the files from your old boot partition to /boot/ on the root partition

$ sudo umount /boot
$ sudo mkdir /media/oldboot
$ sudo mount /dev/[old boot partition] /media/oldboot
$ sudo cp -R /media/oldboot/* /boot/
$ sudo umount /media/oldboot
$ sudo rm /media/oldboot

Now time to modify fstab. Just delete the line about the old /boot/

And now the grub fun. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst on your root partition. Change all root entries to the new ones. The root entries should look like:

root (hd0,0)

The first number is the Hard Disk number, starting in 0. The second is the partition number. Again it starts in 0, so it should be one less than you linux number. I mean partition hda1 will be (hd0,0), while partition hdb3 will be (hd1,2).

After that you should reinstall grub:

$ sudo grub
grub>root (hdx,y)
grub>setup (hdx)
grub>quit

Where x and y are the disk and partition numbers from above.

Restart.

Please, be very careful as any error or typo (either by you or by me) will result in an unbootable system. Please keep a tested LiveCD with you or another boot method just in case anything gets wrong.

Good luck.

Javier.

[Khriz]

Re: Boot partition problem

Thanks a lot Javier, I'll try it this weekend.