On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 8:58 AM Bruno Flueckiger <inform...@gmx.net> wrote: > > On 05.11.18 19:47, David Higgs wrote: > > I read both the FAQ section and the growfs(8) man page but I am not > > yet confident that what I want to do is supported / safe. > > > > http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#GrowPartition > > > > I started with a number of partitions and a bunch of free space. I > > later needed the free space and allocated a /project partition that > > went to the end of my disk. More recently, I emptied the /data > > partition immediately prior. Now I would like to use growfs(8) to > > merge this unused space with the /project partition without losing any > > of the existing data. > > > > See disklabel output below. I have only grown partitions "down", > > never in the other direction. Am I being overly paranoid? > > > > Thanks. > > > > --david > > > > As the FAQ entry states, you can use growfs(8) if the empty space > is after the existing partition, not prior. You can only grow a > partition "down", never "up". What you want to do would require the > following steps: > > 1. Create a new partition on the free space > 2. Move all data to the new partition > 3. Remove the existing /project partition > 4. Use growfs(8) on the new partition to include the space from the old > /project partition
You appear to be right - I see it now. I had not read closely enough, and had focused more on what I could change with the 'm' disklabel(8) command. It would be nice if this info were made explicit in the growfs(8) man page as well. I had already successfully rearranged some partitions using the method you propose, but unfortunately the amount of data in /project is slightly too big to be easily shifted into my remaining free space. I'll try to compress it or temporarily move the data off-system. Thanks for the clue-stick. --david
