Technologically impaired duck is confused by Ubuntu partitions

[Iskalla]

Riiight then, from what I gather I have created two seperate partitions for root and and home, home has a satisfying cool 65gb of free space wheras my root partition has just 12gb and not much left free. From what I gather software is installed straight to the root partition and it will soon be all used up, I was wondering if there is an efficient way to merge the partitions without having to reformat everything and start from scratch, and have enough space left.

Or am I making some really basic mistake and just getting something wrong here...

[Agent 008]

I used Linux for 2 years. When I went back to Windows after that, I felt as if I just got out of prison.

[Iskalla]

I've always felt the opposite, and associate windows with viruses, a chunky and sluggish default browser, that shitty unstoppable indexing system on vista, the paperclip in office and being at work. But that's not the point, I'm happy with Ubuntu and respect different preferences.

[zuperxtreme]

While it's not recomendable to resize partitions, you can do it with a Live CD(the ubuntu installation CD works), run gParted or any other partitioning software and you can change the size. You should seriously back up ...

[rabbitweed]

Originally Posted by Iskalla

Riiight then, from what I gather I have created two seperate partitions for root and and home, home has a satisfying cool 65gb of free space wheras my root partition has just 12gb and not much left free. From what I gather software is installed straight to the root partition and it will soon be all used up, I was wondering if there is an efficient way to merge the partitions without having to reformat everything and start from scratch, and have enough space left.

Or am I making some really basic mistake and just getting something wrong here...

You could use Gparted to expand your root partition to however big you want it, then just copy pasta your info from /home into it.

[zuperxtreme]

He won't be able to expand his root partition if it's mounted, if I remember correctly. Hence the Live CD.

[rabbitweed]

Originally Posted by zuperxtreme

He won't be able to expand his root partition if it's mounted, if I remember correctly. Hence the Live CD.

oh yeah, for some reason I didn't see your post.

OP: LISTEN TO THIS GUY

[pygar]

before dicking around with partitions try:

sudo apt-get autoremove

sudo apt-get clean

sudo apt-get autoclean

[lolocaust]

how the hell did you fill your root already? I've had my install for nearly a year now and I've only used about 4 gigs.

also you should consider a /boot partition, just in case...

edit: in the future you might wanna use lvm, it should be easier to resize when you need it.

[Iskalla]

I MAY be making a mistake, and thinking I need to partition based on my lack of understanding in whats happening with my root partition. I have assumed that everything I install will use up space in that partition, eventually consuming the space entirely. Going straight to /etc/ or /dev/, which both seem to be contained in the partition I have desiganted to root.

I'll throw in the Live CD later and try resizing to a more suitable size if this is the case. That sounds straightforward enough. I also have a Windows partition gathering dust, I might format that at the same time, and expand /home/ too.