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Questions tagged [partition]

Disk partitioning is the act of dividing a hard disk drive into multiple logical storage units referred to as partitions, to treat one physical disk drive as if it were multiple disks.

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Tracking down where disk space has gone on Linux?

When administering Linux systems I often find myself struggling to track down the culprit after a partition goes full. I normally use du / | sort -nr but on a large filesystem this takes a long time before any results are returned. Also, this is…
Owen Fraser-Green
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List partition labels from the command line

Is there a command that will list all partitions along with their labels? sudo fdisk -l and sudo parted -l don't show labels by default. EDIT: (as per comment below) I'm talking about ext2 labels - those that you can set in gparted upon…
sdaau
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Why are there so many different ways to measure disk usage?

When I sum up the sizes of my files, I get one figure. If I run du, I get another figure. If I run du on all the files on my partition, it doesn't match what df claims is used. Why are there so many different figures for the total size of my files?…
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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How to copy the partition layout of a whole disk using standard tools

I want to take a backup of the whole partition layout of a hard drive, including logical drives, so that I can restore that layout to another disk. I do not want to copy the contents of the partitions, only the layout. For the primary and extended…
Lauritz V. Thaulow
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Clear unused space with zeros (ext3,ext4)

How to clear unused space with zeros ? (ext3,ext4) I'm looking for something smarter than cat /dev/zero > /mnt/X/big_zero ; sync; rm /mnt/X/big_zero Like FSArchiver is looking for "used space" and ignores unused, but opposite site. Purpose: I'd…
Grzegorz Wierzowiecki
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Create partition aligned using parted

I'm partitioning a non-SSD hard disk with parted because I want a GPT partition table. parted /dev/sda mklabel gpt Now, I'm trying to create the partitions correctly aligned so I use the following command to know where the first sector…
Marc
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What are the differences between the various partition tables?

When I am looking to create a new partition table, I have the following options: aix amiga bsd dvh gpt mac msdos pc98 sun loop The default in gparted appears to be msdos which I guess is an 'MBR' partition table. However gpt is more recent, but…
user168419
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Is it good to make a separate partition for /boot?

I've seen some people make a separate partition for /boot. What is the benefit of doing this? What problems might I encounter in the future by doing this? Also, except for /home and /boot, which partitions can be separated? Is it recommended?
Am1rr3zA
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What is the difference between a name and a label in gparted?

When I create a new partition on my disk using GParted, I have the option to set both a name and a label. Some partitions I have already have both, some only a label. If I right-click on an existing partition, I can see separate options to set the…
user168419
73
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6 answers

How can I increase the number of inodes in an ext4 filesystem?

I had a problem (new to me) last week. I have a ext4 (Fedora 15) filesystem. The application that runs on the server suddenly stopped. I couldn't find the problem at first look. df showed 50% available space. After searching for about an hour I saw…
piovisqui
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How to safely turn off swap permanently and reclaim the space? (on Debian Jessie)

I installed Debian Jessie with default partitioning on my SSD drive. My current disk partitioning looks like this: As I have 16GB of RAM, I assume I don't need swap. But since I have other disk drives I may create a swapfile for example, on one of…
Vlastimil Burián
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Different linux distros sharing the same /home folder?

What is the best way to share the same /home directories between different linux distribution? I mean, I want to have both, say, Fedora and Arch, and I want to find my files at home no matter which linux distro I boot into. But if I mount the same…
behzad.nouri
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Moving /var, /home to separate partition

I am attempting to move some folders (such as /var and /home) to a separate partition after reading this guide: 3.2.1 Choose an intelligent partition scheme I was able to move one folder successfully following thisguide. However, it doesn't seem to…
toffee.beanns
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Why put things other than /home to a separate partition?

So recently a Debian 5.0.5 installer offered me to have separate /usr, /home, /var and /tmp partitions (on one physical disk). What is the practical reason for this? I understand that /home can be advantageous to put on a separate partition, because…
Alex B
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How to extend filesystem partition on Ubuntu VM?

I'm running Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 as a VM on a mac with vmware fusion. I'm getting space warning issues and now want to expand from 20GB to 200GB. I powered off the VM and on the vmware side increased the allocated disk space: Power off the…
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