Can't use gparted either from LiveCD or on installed Trisquel
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Here's my dilemma as seen from the LiveCD:
sda1 is ext4 and has plenty of spare room for additional applications.
Gparted says that sda2 has an extended file system and includes both sda5 (linux-swap) and sda6 (xfs), but the xfs formatted sda6 partition can't be shrunk according to File System Support. There is over 200GB of room in sda2 which I'd like to shrink to 50GB, because I want to add a fat32 partition for data to be moved back and forth between the Trisquel desktop and a *indows laptop via a NAS of 2TB.
If I attempt to unmount sda6 when running gparted from the installed Trisquel, I'm not allowed to do so because it's in use (to the extent of a 300 MB or so).
When running on the LiveCD it looks as though I'll be allowed to try to reformat sda6 (to fat32, I hope) because it's unmounted right now. If gparted can do that without destroying whatever data that 300MB represents on the unmounted sda6, then I'd shrink the reformatted sda6 partition and then reformat the shrunken sda6 partition back to xfs, followed by making a new partition in the newly emptied space and then formatting that partition to fat32.
How can I find where /dev/sda6 is mounted during operation of the installed Trisquel ? And can I move the data that is there to a different location, followed by relocation using the root terminal, before restarting the installed Trisquel GUI ?
Your explanations give headaches! :-) The important point you apparently already discovered is that an XFS partition cannot be shrunk.
How can I find where /dev/sda6 is mounted during operation of the installed Trisquel ?
Just open a terminal in the installed system and execute:
$ mount | grep sda6
And can I move the data that is there to a different location, followed by relocation using the root terminal, before restarting the installed Trisquel GUI ?
You can do whatever you want. /etc/fstab (that of the installed system, not that of the live system) defines what filesystem will be mounted where at init. Its syntax is specified in the man page you obtained with the following command:
$ man fstab
If you move all data in a filesystem to its mount point in the root partition, then you simply need to remove a line in /etc/fstab (the one related to the former filesystem that was containing the data). If they keep on being on a separate partition then you need to change its id (first column), the type if you changed it (third column) and the options if you wish (fourth column). Notice that you need not use a UUID or a LABEL in the first column. You can simply write /dev/sdaX (where X is the number of the partition).
06-01-2015 23:02:45 name at domain:
> Here's my dilemma as seen from the LiveCD:
>
> sda1 is ext4 and has plenty of spare room for additional
applications.
>
> Gparted says that sda2 has an extended file system and
includes both sda5
> (linux-swap) and sda6 (xfs), but the xfs formatted sda6
partition can't be
> shrunk according to File System Support. There is over
200GB of room in sda2
> which I'd like to shrink to 50GB, because I want to add a
fat32 partition
> for data to be moved back and forth between the Trisquel
desktop and a
> *indows laptop via a NAS of 2TB.
>
> If I attempt to unmount sda6 when running gparted from
the installed
> Trisquel, I'm not allowed to do so because it's in use (to
the extent of a
> 300 MB or so).
>
> When running on the LiveCD it looks as though I'll be
allowed to try to
> reformat sda6 (to fat32, I hope) because it's unmounted
right now. If
> gparted can do that without destroying whatever data that
300MB represents
> on the unmounted sda6, then I'd shrink the reformatted
sda6 partition and
> then reformat the shrunken sda6 partition back to xfs,
followed by making a
> new partition in the newly emptied space and then
formatting that partition
> to fat32.
>
> How can I find where /dev/sda6 is mounted during
operation of the installed
> Trisquel ? And can I move the data that is there to a
different location,
> followed by relocation using the root terminal, before
restarting the
> installed Trisquel GUI ?
Chances are that sda6 is the root of the current system, or
was mounted by a file manager. Anyway, the following
command should help:
lsblk
This stands for "list blocks".
Respectfully, Adonay.
Have a nice day.
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> When running on the LiveCD it looks as though I'll be allowed to try to reformat sda6 (to fat32, I hope) because it's unmounted right now.
Yes.
> If gparted can do that without destroying whatever data that 300MB represents on the unmounted sda6, then I'd shrink the reformatted sda6 partition and then reformat the shrunken sda6 partition back to xfs, followed by making a new partition in the newly emptied space and then formatting that partition to fat32.
If you reformat, you'll lose contents.
Here's what I'm seeing in the installed trisquel:
(1) sudo mount | grep sda6 --> /dev/sda6 on /home type xfs (rw,relatime)
(2) sudo cat /etc/fstab --> (snippage) -->
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=7e8b4066-a36e-4b73-a185-3cd4c9c10bad / ext4 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /home was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=01245680-72cc-46d1-8180-ae37f16ed46d /home xfs relatime 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=282a3b2b-4bb0-489d-9489-e12ae780c251 none swap sw 0 0
It looks as though my /home files are all that there are on sda6; root files are on sda1.
Before I trash all my logs & bookmarks (saved files from Documents are already safely on the NAS) please tell me if the following actions make sense:
(a) Comment out this line in fstab with nano:
# UUID=01245680-72cc-46d1-8180-ae37f16ed46d /home xfs relatime 0 2
(b) Move the contents of sda6:
sudo mkdir /mnt/Home:
sudo mv /home/*.* /mnt/Home/*.*
(c) Unmount sda6:
sudo umount /dev/sda6
(d) Use gparted to reformat sda6 to ext4 now that it's unmounted and empty; ignore the dire warning about lost data.
(e) Shrink sda6 to ca. 50GB and put a new partition in the empty space, formatted fat32 for data.
(f) Reformat the shrunken sda6 to xfs with gparted.
(g) Restore the mount point for the home directory:
sudo mkdir /home
(h) Remount sda6:
sudo mount -t xfs /dev/sda6 /home
(i) Restore that commented-out (#'d) line in fstab:
UUID=01245680-72cc-46d1-8180-ae37f16ed46d /home xfs relatime 0 2
(j) Move the contents of /mnt/Home back to their rightful place in /home
sudo mv /mnt/Home/*.* /home/*.*
(k) Restart the OS.
It seems to me that this can all be done on the installed Trisquel. Just to be sure I'll have copied the contents of /home to my NAS before starting the listed steps.
I'm not sure about my use of *.* in the mv command ... that's what DOS would have wanted ...
There are several unnecessary complications and, at step (i), I am pretty sure the UUID will have changed:
- $ sudo cp -a /home/* /mnt
- Reboot on the live system
- Launch gParted
- Erase /dev/sda6
- Create in the empty space an XFS partition and a FAT32 partition
- Note the number of the XFS partition (/dev/sdaX where X is a number)
- Quit gParted
- Mount the partitions that will be mounted at / and /home (you can do that graphically if you wish)
- Move the users' folders, in the "mnt" directory of the first partition, to the root of the other (empty) partition
- Edit the fstab file (in the "etc" directory of the first partition) so that the first column of the line with /home becomes /dev/sdaX (where X is the number you noted earlier)
- Reboot on the installed system
However, for safety, I would rather backup /home/* on an external drive (what about your NAS?).
Magic Banana said (in part)
> Edit the fstab file (in the "etc" directory of the first partition) so that the first column of the line with /home becomes /dev/sdaX (where X is the number you noted earlier)
The bad news: My fstab's didn't identify /dev/sda6, either in the Live Trisquel or in the installed Trisquel.
The good news: Didn't matter ... however, I did have to do this as root when the system wouldn't boot:
mount -t xfs /dev/sda6 /home
Note that I chose to do a manual repair during this aborted boot. I did not get asked for a password !
Upon the enusing reboot, everything seems to be working OK.
Magic Banana's steps seem like a shell game to me and required a lot more brain activity than I like to apply right after a big, two-hour lunch, so I'm recounting my interpretation of Magic Banana's steps below.
1. In the installed Trisquel: $ sudo cp -a /home/* /mnt (This works, but cp --help is ambiguous; think "all")
2. Reboot on the Live DVD.
3. Launch gParted; reformat sda6 as "blank."
4. In gParted, resize sda6 and reformat as xfs.
5. Still in gParted, create a new partition in the empty space --> sda7 and format as FAT32; label as Data.
6. Exit gParted --> back into Terminal in the Live0-DVD Trisquel.
7. $ sudo mount-t xfs /dev/sda6 /mnt (This put the empty FS that's in sda6 in the /mnt directory of the Live Trisquel)
8. $ sudo mkdir /mnt/home (I probably should have used a different name than "home.")
9. $ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt/home (All still in the /mnt directory of the Live Trisquel)
10. $ sudo cp -a /mnt/home/mnt/* /mnt/ (Note the shell game at work here ... very hard to comprehend)
11. Reboot into the installed Trisquel. (This produced a complaint regarding sda6 & home !)
12. In a root terminal (a bug reached by selecting M for Manual repair): $ mount -t xfs /dev/sda6 /home
13. Reboot successfully into a correctly working installed Trisquel.
Note: Steps (11) & (12) were my fault - I should have remounted sda6 before restarting Trisquel.
Regarding safety: I ended up with a superfluous listing of root-direcory files in the /mnt directory of the installed Trisquel ... but they're at least useful temporarily as backup. I did that because it seemed like the only way to get the /mnt directory from sda1 into the Live Trisquel's file system.
My mind went blank when I tried to figure out how to use terminal to copy /home/* to the NAS.
3. Launch gParted; reformat sda6 as "blank."
Formating is "creating a filesystem on a partition", hence defining the "format" of the data on the partition. As a consequence, I am not sure what you mean by "reformat sda6 as blank". You could just have "erased" the partition sda6 and create the two partitions in the empty space (no resize).
8. $ sudo mkdir /mnt/home
That "home" directory must still be at the root of /dev/sda6 (i.e., you have /home/home in the installed system). You can remove it (although it does not hurt).
10. $ sudo cp -a /mnt/home/mnt/* /mnt/ (Note the shell game at work here ... very hard to comprehend)
It is OK. You did not have to mount a partition inside the other one. You could have done that for instance:
$ sudo mkdir /mnt/root /mnt/home
$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/root
$ sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/home
$ sudo cp -a /mnt/root/mnt/* /mnt/home
I should have remounted sda6 before restarting Trisquel.
That is not the problem (all partitions are unmounted when you shutdown the computer). The problem is that you did not modify the fstab file. With the mount points I chose above:
$ sudo gedit /mnt/root/etc/fstab
With yours:
$ sudo gedit /mnt/home/etc/fstab
You can then simply write /dev/sda6 in the first column of the line with /home in the second column, save, and reboot.
These are my comments on Magic Banana's steps. Don't type
the text after # unless you see a number, a dot, and a currency sign, like this: "1. $"
# You can really think of "-a" as "all" or "accurate".#
# The command "man cp" should give you more
information.#
1. $ sudo cp -a /home/* /mnt
# Skipping to step 8, some steps are self explanatory.#
# When he said "that will be mounted at /" he meant the partition where Trisquel is already in your computer. Paths in operating systems are somewhat "relative" to the current operating system being used, so the "/" (root) that appears right now for you is not the "/" Magic Banana is describing because, remember, by following step 2, you booted the live operating system.#
# "/home" is actually the new XFS partition.#
8. Mount the partitions that will be mounted at / and /home (you can do that graphically if you wish)
# In the next step, he's referring to the "/" (root) of the Trisquel installation that is already in your computer, again.#
# By saying "the other (empty) partition" he meant the XFS partition.#
9. Move the users' folders, in the "mnt" directory of the first partition, to the root of the other (empty) partition.
# In the next step he's actually telling you to go to the "etc" folder at the root of the Trisquel installation that's already in your computer, and edit **that** fstab file. You might want to do this as super user, like this: "sudo nano fstab" or "gksudo fstab".#
10. Edit the fstab file (in the "etc" directory of the first partition) so that the first column of the line with /home becomes /dev/sdaX (where X is the number you noted earlier)
# End of my comments.#
Well, the problem here was just clarification. I just hope I'm not too late.
Respectfully, Adonay.
Have a nice day.
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Not too fast ... continuing annoyance ... how can I fix this:
> 11. Reboot into the installed Trisquel. (This produced a complaint regarding sda6 & home !)
> 12. In a root terminal (a bug reached by selecting M for Manual repair): $ mount -t xfs /dev/sda6 /home
> 13. Reboot successfully into a correctly working installed Trisquel.
On ensuing restarts, the same sequence has been necessary. Fortunately, root remembers what I last did, so the continuation of my reboot of Trisquel requires only a few keystrokes and clicks.
As I had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of fstab in the first place, can I just rename fstab:
sudo mv /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
And let Trisquel fix it on the next restart ?
Here's what fstab looks like right now:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
#
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=7e8b4066-a36e-4b73-a185-3cd4c9c10bad / ext4 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /home was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=01245680-72cc-46d1-8180-ae37f16ed46d /home xfs relatime 0 2
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=282a3b2b-4bb0-489d-9489-e12ae780c251 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
Magic Banana suggested that I make note of the partition number of the xfs partition before & after my use of gParted to reduce its size. The number (sda6) didn't change. However, while I was in Live Trisquel, the two fstab's that I looked at didn't look like this at all - the UUID's weren't there. Further, it bothers me that the only place where /dev/sda6 ismentioned is in a comment line. What's to change now in fstab ?
What's wrong with fstab as it looks right now ?
I'll restart again and make a copy of fstab as it appears from that much-dreaded root terminal.
09-01-2015 14:43:58 name at domain:
> Not too fast ... continuing annoyance ... how can I fix this:
> > 11. Reboot into the installed Trisquel. (This produced a
complaint
>
> regarding sda6 & home !)
>
> > 12. In a root terminal (a bug reached by selecting M for
Manual repair):
> > $
>
> mount -t xfs /dev/sda6 /home
>
> > 13. Reboot successfully into a correctly working
installed Trisquel.
>
> On ensuing restarts, the same sequence has been
necessary. Fortunately, root
> remembers what I last did, so the continuation of my
reboot of Trisquel
> requires only a few keystrokes and clicks.
>
> As I had nothing whatsoever to do with the creation of
fstab in the first
> place, can I just rename fstab:
>
> sudo mv /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
>
> And let Trisquel fix it on the next restart ?
>
> Here's what fstab looks like right now:
>
> # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
> #
> # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
> # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust
way to name devices
> # that works even if disks are added and removed. See
fstab(5).
> #
> #
> # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
> UUID=7e8b4066-a36e-4b73-a185-3cd4c9c10bad /
ext4
> relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
> # /home was on /dev/sda6 during installation
> UUID=01245680-72cc-46d1-8180-ae37f16ed46d /home
xfs relatime
> 0 2
> # swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
> UUID=282a3b2b-4bb0-489d-9489-e12ae780c251 none
swap sw
> 0 0
> /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto
rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
>
> Magic Banana suggested that I make note of the partition
number of the xfs
> partition before & after my use of gParted to reduce its
size. The number
> (sda6) didn't change. However, while I was in Live
Trisquel, the two fstab's
> that I looked at didn't look like this at all - the UUID's
weren't there.
> Further, it bothers me that the only place where /dev/sda6
ismentioned is
> in a comment line. What's to change now in fstab ?
>
> What's wrong with fstab as it looks right now ?
>
> I'll restart again and make a copy of fstab as it appears
from that
> much-dreaded root terminal.
Well, it seems both I and Magic Banana have failed to tell
you to follow the instructions in the first comment in the
fstab file.
If you want the short answer, go to the
Your guesses **are** right about the changes in the fstab
file,and by now you might have already noticed that if a disk
partition table is changed (that's what you did using
GParted), assignments to those partitions' device names like
"/dev/sd[Disk letter][Partition number]" (where A is any
letter, and N a number) may no longer refer to the same
partition if these were changed, the same applies to what the
fstab file refers as UUID (universally unique identifier).
If we assume the starting point to be the fstab file then, the
procedure is as follows (note "-" is normal procedure, "+" is
other completely unrelated procedure and not done by fstab:
- Partition is found with matching UUID in the fstab file;
- When found, partition is mounted **as** given
place/location, with given options.
+ System then recognizes partition by its UUID as existing
inside a disk and assigns a device file for it (now, partition
can be referenced using /dev/sd[Disk letter][Partition
number]).
However, if the fstab file has an UUID which can't be found
by the system the procedure is as follows:
+ System recognizes partition by its UUID as existing inside
a disk and assigns a device file for it (now, partition can be
referenced using /dev/sd[Disk letter][Partition number]).
To fix this, just follow these steps (phrases between #s are
comments):
1. Boot the installed system and do the necessary
procedures to have your system set up;
# The next command lists all known block devices' identities
recgnized by the system, and then passes the output to an
"output filter" that will display only lines containing
"TYPE="xfs" ". This must be run as super user, otherwise
no output will be shown. #
# The output should be exactly one line, otherwise, abort. #
2. sudo blkid | grep "TYPE=\"xfs\""
3. Copy the letters, numbers and hyphens between "
UUID="[Letters, numbers and hyphens here]" " to some
text file and leave the text file open (we'll call this text file as
Untitled).
4. Open/edit the fstab file located in /etc as super user;
# If you use a graphical editor, do: #
# gksudo [preferred text editor (if it uses GTK)] #
# kdesudo [preferred text editor (if it uses Qt/KDE)] #
# Or, if you prefer a pseudo-graphical editor: #
# sudo [nano, vim, vi, emacs...] #
# Now, continuing. #
5. Copy that sequence from the Untitled text file, go to the
fstab file, locate where it says "/dev/sda6" or "/home"
(whatever), and **in the line below**, remove the letters,
numbers and hyphens after "UUID=" (note that **the
sequence ends before the first space/tab**), then replace it
with the sequence copied from the Untitled text file.
6. Reboot/restart.
# End of comments and instructions. #
This should solve the problem.
Respectfully, Adonay.
Have a nice day.
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Well, it seems both I and Magic Banana have failed to tell you to follow the instructions in the first comment in the fstab file.
I think I did not provide enough explanations and you provided too many. It is hard to be clear... :-)
Your instructions to find the UUID certainly are OK but why bothering? As long as no SCSI disk is ever installed, explicitly writing "/dev/sda6" is reliable. I assume it is the case (unless amenex is a retro sysadmin). Also, one can write "LABEL=..." where "..." is the label chosen when the filesystem was made (e.g., from GParted). In my opinion, it is nicer than the UUID and just as reliable (even if you install SCSI disks).
On ensuing restarts, the same sequence has been necessary.
That is because the UUID at the line relating to /home in /etc/fstab is incorrect. As a consequence, the filesystem with the users' data is not automatically mounted.
To not manually do that at every init, you need to correct that line in /etc/fstab: you can simply write /dev/sda6 in its first column.
/etc/fstab cannot be automatically regenerated! If you (re)move it, you will not only have to manually mount the home filesystem but also the root filesystem.
You can edit the fstab file from the Live system if you wish (or if you cannot boot the installed system anymore). Edit the right file though! Not the fstab file of the Live system but that of the installed system. For instance, you can do that:
$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
$ sudo gedit /mnt/etc/fstab
ADFENO wrote helpfully:
> ... snippage ...
> # The output should be exactly one line, otherwise, abort. #
> 2. sudo blkid | grep "TYPE=\"xfs\""
That line would not work as written or any other way I tried ...
Here's what I got with "sudo blkid" instead:
>> george@george-DA237A-ABA-6430NX-NA910:~$ sudo blkid
>> /dev/sda1: UUID="7e8b4066-a36e-4b73-a185-3cd4c9c10bad" TYPE="ext4"
>> /dev/sda5: UUID="282a3b2b-4bb0-489d-9489-e12ae780c251" TYPE="swap"
>> /dev/sda6: UUID="f1f224b2-7979-45ee-a38b-55589d585dd4" TYPE="xfs"
>> /dev/sda7: LABEL="DATA" UUID="B946-098F" TYPE="vfat"
However, the rest of the ADFENO's instructions worked OK, except that I shortened the process simply by brute-force typing the UUID of /dev/sda6 (f1f224b2-7979-45ee-a38b-55589d585dd4) into the appropriate place in /etc/fstab with sudo nano and saving the file with Contr-X. Copy & paste is of no effect, but careful typing did the trick. Restart was uneventful on the first try, so I have my desired FAT32 Data partition now.
Thanks to all. Remember, text files take up negligible space on hard drives these days, in contrast to the DOS of two-floppy-drive PC's. I wish the man-pages reflected that state of affairs.
Copy & paste is of no effect
In GNOME Terminal (Trisquel's default virtual terminal), the shortcut for copy is Shift+Ctrl+C; and Shift+Ctrl+V to paste. You can alternatively select the text and middle-click to paste it (it works everywhere; not only in the virtual terminal).
And again: you could just have written "/dev/sda6" instead of "UUID=f1f224b2-7979-45ee-a38b-55589d585dd4".
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