KjetilK's Journal: Please HELP: My disk partitioning is bad...

Well, when I installed Linux on a box now serving as a server, I have to admit my disk partitioning was bad. I thought cfdisk would hold my hand and prevent me from doing something stupid, but apparently it didn't. The problem is that the virtual (or extended) partition, holding most of the partitions is at the end of the disk. I guess this reduces the efficiency of the disk.

Also, I have had a bit of a problem making new partitions. I'd like to make a /var/cache-partition, because there is often a lot of stuff there, and a /var/mail/junk-partition, so that the stuff I'll let SpamAssassin and Procmail put there won't affect the rest of the drive in case a spammer goes crazy against my mail server. I've got about 6 gigs of free space on that drive.

Is there a nice tool that will repartition my disk non-destructively (yeah, I know, backups), and do it more sensibly than I? I'm, running Debian Woody on this box.

Update 2003-07-29: I have found what I'm looking for: Part-GUI, is it, definately! Unfortunately, it is still in beta, and I don't think I have the skills to contribute so much, so I guess I would just have to wait.

cfdisk

[diamondc]

Yeah, cfdisk during the Debian Woody install is tricky.. from what I remember, I made hda1(/ only about 200MB) hda2(swap partition) then I did an extended partition (hda3, I believe cfdisk assigns the partition) and then I just added more partitions while the extended partition was highlighted, then you can add as many logical partitions you want in hda3.

Repartitioning

[BJH]

Use GNU parted (http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/ [gnu.org]).

Re:Repartitioning

[KjetilK]

Yeah, thanks, I looked at it, but I didn't understand enough to feel completely comfortable with the idea of using it. I don't need a GUI for every application (I use none for most), but for this, a GUI would have been nice...

Re:Repartitioning

[BJH]

It's really not as hard as it looks; I didn't want to try it, either, but once I actually used it, it was a lot simpler than it had originally seemed.