On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 14:46 +0100, Rowan Berkeley wrote: > On Wed, 2010-05-26 at 13:51 +0100, Neil Greenwood > <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 26 May 2010 07:29, Rowan Berkeley <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 20:58 +0100, Matthew Daubney > > <[email protected]> > > > wrote: > > >> This is an incredibly dangerous idea. When you're mucking around > > >> with partitions it is very, _very_, UNsafe to have the _device_ > > >> mounted. Having been building storage systems for the past 8 > > >> months, I've dealt with things in terrible states, one of the > > >> causes being people believing that repartitioning with a volume > > >> mounted is a good idea. Matt Daubney > > > > Thank you Matt for telling me that you have actually seen drives > > > messed up in this way. I still wonder why it should be so incredibly > > > dangerous but you have convinced me that it is. Rowan > > > The why is because other programs could be trying to update bits of > > the disc as gparted tries to move it. It's a bit like trying to change > > the wheel on a car that doesn't have the handbrake on - it *might* not > > move... Cofion/Regards, Neil. > > Quite so, but all the program files and associated data are in sda1, > which remains mounted. The only things in the partitions that are being > moved are the swap space and the user files. The swap space could > certainly be called on while one was moving it, but there are special > procedures to cope with this, namely making a new swap space where you > want it, then somehow setting the machine to switch over from using the > old swap space to the new swap space next time it starts up, thus > avoiding any overlaps. At least, I assume that is the idea. The user > files (My Documents, My Music, etc.) are not updated by anything. The > whole essence of this is that one is not talking about unmounting the > entire internal hard disk; each partition can be separately mounted and > unmounted, hopefully without affecting the others. >
type 'ps axf' in a terminal while you're doing nothing. How many of those running processes do you know enough about to guarantee none of them won't try and access the partition you're monkeying with? 1,2? I'd really be surprised if it was all of them. Running from a live CD reduces this risk significantly. Seriously, I believe in the idea of "For every problem that I can think of, there are 10 I can't". -Matt Daubney -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
