Re: repartitioning - merged partitions

[Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com>]

hi ya matt

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005, Matt Price wrote:

> >>can I do all this without rebooting?  Or is that a pipe dream?  
> > 
> > 
> > you will have to reboot .. or write the code so that one doesnt have
> > to reboot when moving partition boundries around :-)
> > 
> 
> ok, well, I'm not gonna do that until after I learn C I guess..  but 
> seriously, is this something that other 'nixes can do?  Must this bea 
> fundamental barrier?

in order to merge 2 partitions together and/or move partition boundries,
you or the "smart os" will need to :

	- save off all important system and user data on those sections of
	disks to some temp space someplace
		- you will need lots of temp space for the partitions
		being delted

	- now you or the "smart OS" can move the cylinder boundries

	- reformat with your new favorite filesystem

	- restore the moved data back onto the newly created partitions

	- "lvm" can grow and shrink your partition sizes on the fly,
	but it already has that "extra layer" built in

- but if the system or the kernel data happened to be in those to be
  deleted partitions, it'd be a fun process to move and restore
  your data dynamically on the fly, for data that keeps moving and
  changing

	i thought "data" was at 256:5:32  but it's now at 10256:8:63
	for each 512 bytes of data

	( raw "cylinder:head:sector" on the disk itself )

	- a fancy disk driver ( part of the new linux-4.0 kernel ) will
	also work to keep track of the dynamic data moving around

c ya
alvin