[olug] Insufficient space on /boot to upgrade F13-F14

[Rob Townley]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 10:27 PM, Obi-Wan <obiwan at jedi.com> wrote:
> I'm currently running F13 on a Dell XPS 1210 laptop with a ~80GB drive
> partitioned as follows:
>
> Device    Boot Start  End   Blocks Id System
> /dev/sda1    *     1   33   265041 83 Linux (/boot, ext3)
> /dev/sda2         34 9285 74316690 83 Linux (/ - encrypted ext3)
> /dev/sda3       9286 9546 2096482+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
>
> # df -m
> Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/mapper/luks-1c640d61-ab9a-4fcc-8251-c1c7584f2b11
>                         71436     15171     55541  22% /
> /dev/sda1                  251        45       193  19% /boot
>
>
> Only the actively running kernel is installed in /boot.  When I try to
> upgrade from F13 to F14 using the package update GUI, it complains that
> there is insufficient space in /boot, and refuses to go on.  Before the
> attempted upgrade, only 13% was in use.  I've since added a kernel
> upgraded within F13.  There isn't anything left for me to delete to
> free up more space. It seems silly for the upgrade to require
> dramatically more space in /boot than does general day-to-day
> operation. Isn't there any way I can tell it to use /tmp or /var for
> its scratch space?
>
> Is there any way to get around this using my current partitioning?
>
> If not, is there any way I can steal another 256MB from swap (sda3) and
> add it to /boot (sda1), even though an encrypted partition (/, sda2)
> sits between them on the disk?
>
> --
> Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth                             obiwan at jedi.com
>   The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
>     Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
>       promise that You will pull me through.  -- Rich Mullins
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>

i feel the pain as i just finally got around this same problem my
self, except i did not have an encrypted partition.  What happened to
the option to continue anyway with the promise that this machine
connects using a hardwired connection.

parted in addition to having a resize command, it also has a move
which may move 1GB from your encrypted partition to the end to free up
space?  i didn't do that however, i had a $69 OfficeDepot 1TB drive
which i copied to partition by parttion, so i only had to do help
resize, then move on to the next partition.  Do not mix fdisk with
parted as parted may not see fdisk changes even after rebooting.

Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) help move
  move NUMBER START END                    move partition NUMBER

	NUMBER is the partition number used by Linux.  On MS-DOS disk labels,
        the primary partitions number from 1 to 4, logical partitions from 5
        onwards.
        START and END are disk locations, such as 4GB or 10%.  Negative values
        count from the end of the disk.  For example, -1s specifies exactly the
        last sector.
(parted)


p.s. There are many tutorials that say to remove journaling from ext3
source partitions to get parted to copy over.  i copied over /boot/
using dd instead.

Tutorials that say "Trust Me with your wife's photo collection",
change the start and end locations directly on the original
filesystem.  i didn't see either as a good idea so i found other ways.