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There are other postings on this topic, but because of the importance of getting it right I am posting the exact details of my requirement.

My disk is:

/dev/sda
  /dev/sda/sda1 to be mounted as /     has  10GB
  /dev/sda/sda6 to be mounted as /home has 150GB
  /dev/sda/sda5 to be mounted as /swap has   1GB

I have 1GB of RAM and think it would be advisable to increase the /swap partition to 2GB (tell me if you disagree). There is no unallocated space on the disk although plenty of spare space in /home. Can I increase the /swap either when installing Ubuntu 14.04 or with something like Gparted, without damaging the data in /home? Obviously I would do a backup first.

Alaa Ali
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ChrisOfBristol
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1 Answers1

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  • Boot from Ubuntu live disk and then click on try Ubuntu option on starup.

  • Open gparted partition editor from dash.

  • After it opened, make sure that all the partitions are unmounted(including swap).So that only you can be able to resize corresponding partition.If the swap partition is already mounted then select Swap off option on right-clicking swap partition to get unmounted.

  • Shrink your /home(/dev/sda6) partition to get 1 GB of free space and add it to your /dev/sda5 swap partition.

Avinash Raj
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  • Thanks, that is clear enough. Sorry to labour the point, but obviously I am concerned about my data - is it safe to take space from a partition with data in and re-allocate it? – ChrisOfBristol Apr 19 '14 at 16:55
  • yes, it's safe.Follow my instructions given in the answer correctly.If you have any doubts, feel free to ask me.Please don't do anything wrongly.See also http://askubuntu.com/questions/178712/how-to-increase-swap-space/389067#389067 – Avinash Raj Apr 19 '14 at 16:58
  • I didn't really follow the link as it seems to be talking about unallocated space, but it doesn't matter. The reason I asked is because I have just installed elementaryOS and have had a few problems with it and found there is very little support, I will give it another couple of days and if the help doesn't materialise I will install something else, this is the point at which it would make sense for me to change the partitions. I'll let you know what happens. I will of course take great care with it - it's the scariest job on an OS I think. – ChrisOfBristol Apr 19 '14 at 17:11
  • Ok, go on with partitioning. And don't forget to accept my answer if it works. – Avinash Raj Apr 19 '14 at 17:13
  • I'll have to do a backup first. – ChrisOfBristol Apr 19 '14 at 17:28
  • backup most important datas. I resized my partitions many times through gparted without backing up the datas. – Avinash Raj Apr 19 '14 at 17:29
  • I've used System Monitor several times, with a large spreadsheet and many YouTube videos open, and only about 20% of swap was used, so I have decided that I don't need to increase it. Your help was invaluable though, and I will be confident to use your instructions in the future if I need to. – ChrisOfBristol Apr 25 '14 at 00:42