# resize partiton when you can't go into single user?



## wonslung (Jun 19, 2009)

i've done a search and i don't see an answer to this.

Heres my situation.

I have a server, remote location.  The hosting company offers the servers in raid1, but i switched to raid0 because i need space more than anything else, this is for a seedbox.  the install system is all webform based so it lets you pick partion sizes but it goes by the raid1 size of the drive, so the last partition ends up being very large.  what i want to do is DELETE that partition and make 2 smaller ones.  I've tried doing this with sysinstall but it just doesn't work...i can't get into single user mode because it's remote.

Is there ANYWAY i can handle this?


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## jef (Jun 19, 2009)

I believe the proper incantation is


```
# sysctl kern.geom.bootflags=16
```

which should put you into what I recall reading as "shoot-yourself-in-the-foot mode"

You may also see 17 as the value in some docs. I believe the only difference is that the additional "1" flag is to provide detailed logging.

You may also want to look at using _sade _or _fdisk _and _bsdlabel _directly, rather than _sysinstall_. _bsdlabel _looks unfriendly at first, but it does allow use of _* _for many parameters, as well as _10G _notation for 10 gigabytes.


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## wonslung (Jun 19, 2009)

yes, i did that, it still didn't work.

for some reason even though i manually unmounted first before sysinstall it wouldn't work

what i ended up doing was this:
i wanted to make a seperate var and usr partition but since i had the one large partiton i made it /newusr and did a cpio of user into it.
then i did the same thing with var, and then deleted var and usr
then i made a symbolic link for var=> usr/var
and then i changed fstab to mount the big partion to /usr
worked like a champ.


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## jef (Jun 20, 2009)

If it makes you feel any better, I can't get the /dev entries to appear without rebooting. 

IMHO, this is quite a pain, as one should be able to add a new "chunk" to the filesystem from free space without having to either drop to single user mode or to reboot.


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## fronclynne (Jun 20, 2009)

*I should just stop posting and drink another beer*



			
				jef said:
			
		

> If it makes you feel any better, I can't get the /dev entries to appear without rebooting.
> 
> IMHO, this is quite a pain, as one should be able to add a new "chunk" to the filesystem from free space without having to either drop to single user mode or to reboot.


I've not experienced this problem, but does `# /etc/rc.d/devd restart` do anything?

(parenthetically, I might be all wet and have meant `# /etc/rc.d/devfs restart` since I forget the effects of "them")

(PS I did just test the devd restart and it doesn't make the computer jump around like a washing machine full of bricks, but I don't have any spare partitions to test on right now to see if it help with that, sorry)


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