[SOLVED]installation: partition size FAIL, too small /var

Question

Yeah, I managed to make a mess again.
I thought I had given the /var 15 GB and it turned out to be 1.5 GB, now I'm facing this situation:
[tomislav@shakenbake ~]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 14G 2.5G 11G 19% /
udev 10M 216K 9.8M 3% /dev
shm 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 464M 23M 418M 6% /boot
/dev/sda3 1.4G 1.1G 327M 78% /var
/dev/sda6 274G 1.8G 258G 1% /home
[tomislav@shakenbake ~]$
the 78% filled var is a BIG mistake. What do I do now? Should I use rsync and do a system backup, resize the /home partition using the cfdisk command and an Archlinux live CD, then copy everything back? Do this just for these two partitions (home and var are adjacent)?
Can I use rsync in a way that it stores the partition information, although I will send everything onto a single partition on an external HDD?
Damn it. This is what happens when you hurry: the newbness deamons get you.
Last edited by tomislavski (2010-04-02 14:30:14)

Answer 1

Hi, me again.
Everything works: I've managed to resize the partitions manually using cfdisk and creating the filesystems.
Still, "df -h" doesn't seem to notice the difference. I have written the partition table to disk during the cfdisk session, but something is wrong.
Here's "fdisk -l":
[root@shakenbake tomislav]# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7a3cfdca
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 61 489951 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 62 1885 14651280 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 1886 3101 9767520 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 3102 38913 287659890 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 3102 3648 4393746 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 3649 38913 283266081 83 Linux
[root@shakenbake tomislav]#
here's "df -h":
[root@shakenbake tomislav]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2 14G 2.5G 11G 19% /
udev 10M 200K 9.9M 2% /dev
shm 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 464M 23M 418M 6% /boot
/dev/sda3 1.4G 1.2G 242M 84% /var
/dev/sda6 266G 1.7G 251G 1% /home
[root@shakenbake tomislav]#
and there's no swap in mount, although there is one in /etc/fstab:
[root@shakenbake tomislav]# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
devpts /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
shm /dev/shm tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
/dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
#/dev/fd0 /media/fl auto user,noauto 0 0
/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/sda2 / ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1
/dev/sda3 /var reiserfs defaults,noatime,notail 0 2
/dev/sda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sda6 /home ext3 defaults,noatime 0 2
[root@shakenbake tomislav]#
"mount":
[root@shakenbake tomislav]# mount
/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw,noatime,commit=360)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=10240k,mode=755)
none on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw,noatime,commit=360)
/dev/sda3 on /var type reiserfs (rw,noatime,notail,commit=360)
/dev/sda6 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime,commit=360)
[root@shakenbake tomislav]#
I didn't have to change /etc/fstab because the names of the partitions and the file systems remained the same after resizing.
The only thing that I've missed was the swap being actually between /var and /home but I've just moved everything by deleting/recreating/reformatting.
Why doesn't the kernel read from the written new partition table and still shows the wrong (old) sizes for the partitions?
I have done a system update, just to be sure, and as above in the "df -h" output, I've seen that my /var is now over 80% full, although I have resized it to 10 GB.
Although the swap is not mounted, I have tested it by using "pm-hibernate" and it works perfectly. It gets mounted and the session gets saved. I have some brightness issues there, but that's another problem...
Any advice?