How do I increase a partition size (that doesn't use LVM) without removing and re-adding it

Question

I have /usr on a separate partition. At the moment, this is how the server is set up:

[root@localhost ~]# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2       4.9G  329M  4.6G   7% /
devtmpfs        366M     0  366M   0% /dev
tmpfs           372M     0  372M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           372M  5.0M  367M   2% /run
tmpfs           372M     0  372M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda5       997M  871M  127M  88% /usr
/dev/sda1       9.8G   33M  9.8G   1% /home

[root@localhost ~]# lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0   20G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0  9.8G  0 part /home
├─sda2   8:2    0  4.9G  0 part /
├─sda3   8:3    0  1.5G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda4   8:4    0    1K  0 part 
└─sda5   8:5    0 1000M  0 part /usr
sr0     11:0    1 1024M  0 rom

while running a yum update a few minutes back, I encountered the following error:

  installing package swig-2.0.10-4.el7.x86_64 needs 397MB on the /usr filesystem
  installing package diffstat-1.57-4.el7.x86_64 needs 397MB on the /usr filesystem
  installing package rcs-5.9.0-5.el7.x86_64 needs 398MB on the /usr filesystem
  installing package byacc-1.9.20130304-3.el7.x86_64 needs 398MB on the /usr filesystem
  installing package ctags-5.8-13.el7.x86_64 needs 399MB on the /usr filesystem
  installing package indent-2.2.11-13.el7.x86_64 needs 399MB on the /usr filesystem

Error Summary
-------------
Disk Requirements:
  At least 399MB more space needed on the /usr filesystem.

At the moment, I'm thinking of reducing the size of /home and allot that to /usr (which is under /dev/sda5). Since this isn't LVM-based, how would I go about reducing the size of /home (by say 1G) and allot it to /usr without deleting either partition?

Answer 1

Its extremely difficult to achieve what you want.

I dont suggest reformatting as there is a means to salvage this.

I'd drop /usr completely by copying the entire contents of it into the /usr mounted in /.

Something like this should work. I haven't tested it.

mkdir /tmp/reroot
mount /dev/sda2 /tmp/reroot
cp -a /usr/. /tmp/reroot/usr/.
vi /etc/fstab # edit fstab to remove /usr mount
reboot

Answer 2

You can move some content from /usr to /home with cp then soft linking the old location to the new. For example you can move the yum data folder, I already did it on some server on the past.

Answer 3

You can't really resize a basic partition, since partitions are made via physical slices of the disk, so:

sda      8:0    0   20G
├─sda1   8:1    0  9.8G  0     - 9.8G
├─sda2   8:2    0  4.9G  9.8G  - 14,7G
├─sda3   8:3    0  1.5G  14,7G - 16,2G
├─sda4   8:4    0    1K  16,2G - 20G    (LOGICAL PARTITION)
└─sda5   8:5    0 1000M  16,2G(+1K) - 17,2G

You could only extend the last partition to the disk size.

LVM used a logic layer that puts shards of data on disk (no artificial order). Then it is possible to shrink (free data) (needs to be OFFLINE / unmounted) and grow data of every logical volume (by just allowing the volume to allocate more of the physical shards)

In your case you would have to re-arrange most of the data on disk.

I would recommend backup, reformat the disk with boot partition + LVM, and restore the system onto the new layout.

Answer 4

Partitions must be continuous on a disc, and as your /home and /usr aren't contiguous you can't do what you're proposing. Even if there were you would have to move the start of onw of them, that's generally very hard.

It depends on the filesystem how you shrink (if you even can) or expand it, and none of output show what filesystem(s) you use.

Answer 5

with RHEL7, one can grow file system using xfs_growfs(8), needless to say it is risky and before doing anything like that, make sure you have backup..

I asked similar question about a year ago and @Michael Hampton answer it:

redhat - How to Increase the Size of an XFS File System? - Server Fault