vr wrote:
[snip] I'd hoped there was a block by block way to do it so I didn't have to set up the partitions & filesystems ahead of time but I suppose that part won't be too painful.
Well, as I said in another branch of the thread, you can shrink most filesystems, including all extfs (I think the only bad boy here is XFS), look at resize2fs(8) from e2fsprogs for these.
Again, the solution is not necessarily better nor simpler, just different.
The system is relatively idle during these types of surgeries because I boot from a live CD so the data on disk isn't churning.
That's good, and I'd say that's even necessary if you don't have snapshotting tools (LVM2 is good at it).
[snip]
-thib