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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Getting a bigger /boot directory



fkrogh
April 23rd, 2009, 03:20 AM
I'm a bit confused and I'm hoping some kind soul will help untangle
this mess.

I would like to make by boot partition bigger. I was used to gentoo
and made it way too small for Ubnuntu. I don't care where /boot ends
up as long as I can put something in /boot/grub/menu.lst that enables
it to be found. Data on my system is at the bottom.

Will the following work?
cp -pr /boot /bootnew
Using fdisk change the bootable drive to sda5 and remove the flag from sda1.
Change menu.lst to use (hd0,4) instead of (hd0,0)
Remove /dev/sda1 from /etc/fstab
mv /bootnew /boot

If this should boot then great, it is good enough. Maybe later I
could use a different name /dev/sda1 in fstab.


If someone has a better idea I'd be willing to boot from a live CD and
run gparted. But just what I can move and how is beyond me. If
someone tells me to forget this and just do a fresh install, I will do
this, but this means more work that I am hoping for.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.
Many thanks,
Fred


======= Pertinent lines from /etc/fstab
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda5
UUID=5dc6b6b2-d51a-4ba0-9d72-bf2e7b093901 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda1
UUID=ee81236c-bd4e-4533-be8d-6aa1b61df392 /boot ext2 noatime 0 2

========== Partitions from /proc/partitions
8 0 488386584 sda
8 1 56196 sda1
8 2 987997 sda2
8 3 104422 sda3
8 4 1 sda4
8 5 97667136 sda5

========== Partitions from fdisk -lu
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 112454 56196 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 112455 2088449 987997+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 * 2088450 2297294 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 2297295 197631629 97667167+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 2297358 197631629 97667136 83 Linux

/dev/sda1 * 1 7 56196 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 8 130 987997+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 * 131 143 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 144 12302 97667167+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 144 12302 97667136 83 Linux

========= Lines from /boot/grub/menu.lst
title Ubuntu 8.04.2, kernel 2.6.24-23-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.24-23-generic root=UUID=5dc6b6b2-d51a-4ba0-9d72-bf2e7b093901 ro quiet splash
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.24-23-generic

========= Results from running df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 96132940 14824016 76425568 17% /
varrun 1004780 244 1004536 1% /var/run
varlock 1004780 0 1004780 0% /var/lock
udev 1004780 64 1004716 1% /dev
devshm 1004780 0 1004780 0% /dev/shm
lrm 1004780 39792 964988 4% /lib/modules/2.6.24-23-generic/volatile
/dev/sda1 52659 18231 31619 37% /boot

cariboo
April 23rd, 2009, 04:47 AM
With the size of hard drives these days, there is no need to split / into a bunch of small partitions. Back in the day when hard drive sizes where < 1Gb it was a good idea to split the partition over several drives.

I typically create a / partition of 5-6 Gb on a desktop system and 25Gb on a server.