I’ve been having a problem with expanding my Fedora install partition. You can easily grow partitions if they have unallocated space right next to them in the partition table. But my problem is that my boot partition is in the way, as you can see in the image. My question is this: is there a way for me to safely grow my fedora partition into the unallocated space, even though there’s a partition in the way?
This should be possible by moving the partition with GParted.
Make sure to back up your important data beforehand.
You’re dual booting with Windows and Fedora … you must reduce space allocated to Windows OS using MS tools as it’s the global space that needs to be reduced, not just the 761 GB free space as specific to Windows NT. After use Fedora tools to move Linux OS partitions if possible.
Maybe just reinstall everything, making initially two partions for each OS, easy with Fedora installer or W10 installation media on USB device.
You are using btrfs in Fedora. So you just create a partition in the Free Space (any size) and add that partition to the btrfs pool (similiar to adding a partition or physical volume to a Volume Group in LVM, in case you are a bit familiar with LVM)
it would be something along the following lines, make sure you read a bit about it, before performing the action.
# mkfs.btrfs /dev/sdaX
# btrfs device add /dev/sdaX /
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True but gnome-disk-utility screenshot shows a mixed configuration with successively in numbered partitions ntfs recovery, efi, unknown, ntfs data, boot ext4, btrfs, ntfs where Windows NT is. Btrfs has magical tricks but can’t expand without contiguous space as bordered by ntfs file system or ext4 boot partition … so two partitions with operating system in each leaving the eventual question of shared data partition. Adding partitions in any file system might just just blow away the whole thing as free space is accounted somewhere. Ideas?
Simplest and to me least worrisome is to move the /boot partition to the beginning of the free space. Then to do as mentioned with adding a partition in the free space and using the btrfs commands given add that space to the / subvolume.
Moving /boot can be done from the running system with gparted if it is unmounted first.
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I was able to add the btrfs device as per augenauf’s instructions, but it ended up breaking a few things. First, my fedora install partition now shows as being over 100% full, as you can see in the image. Second, the partition I made out of the unallocated space (the one to the left of the highlighted one in the image) is one that shows as not mounted, yet no matter how much I try, it doesn’t show as mounted. Also, the partition behaves weirdly, like not showing a %full stat and having the same UUID as the original partition. Is there a way to solve this?
It is normal that it has the same UUID, you have merged the two partitions.
For space over 100% it will be a GNOME Disks GUI bug [1].
To see more information about the space and devices use the “btrfs” command:
sudo btrfs filesystem show /
sudo btrfs filesystem usage -T /
sudo btrfs filesystem df /
I hope I have been of help, also wait for other more experienced users to confirm what I wrote.
[1] Maybe this is it? : https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-disk-utility/-/issues/24
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