making /var bigger

[Emma Jane Hogbin <emmajane@xtrinsic.com>]

Hey everyone:

I've got some unformatted disk space and I'd like to use it to make /var
bigger. This is my existing system:

htdig@debian:/$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2             464M   27M  413M   7% /
/dev/hda3             4.6G  1.6G  2.8G  37% /home
/dev/hda5             2.3G  1.2G 1023M  55% /usr
/dev/hda6             464M  396M   44M  91% /var
/dev/hda7             2.8G   46M  2.6G   2% /usr/local
/dev/hda9              46M   60K   44M   1% /tmp

I also have a windows partition (or two) with approximately 8Gb available.
I was thinking of giving /var 2.6Gb total (adding 2Gb). This is a laptop 
so the log files
aren't critical for anything fun like web servers. I don't leave my mail
in /var/mail (I move it over to my home directory). I'm currently running
Woody (unstable).

1. What do I need to do before I add the extra disk space? I can throw the
entire current partition onto a cdrom as a backup. Is there anything else
I need to do?

2. How do I actually resize a partition? Is "parted" a good package?
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/parted.html

3. Without meaning to start a huge debate, is my current space allocation
ok? I'm using my laptop as a development box. It has apache, mysql, open
office, a bunch of browsers and vim. Really, what else does a girl need?
;)

thanks!

emma :)

-- 
Emma Jane Hogbin
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