I downloaded the Solaris recommended patched for x86 and tried to install it, but I got the message that I dont have enough disk space. I don't want to install the patches without the option to back out. Anyway I did a df -k and found that my root mount point is in 948MB whereas my /export/home is 8GB. I would like to resize to make things a bit more even. I have some idea what to do( use the format command) but I read that doing this will cause me to lose all my data. Could someone please clarify-- will I lose data? Also, please explain what I need to do to resize slices.
Much appreciated.

unlike aix, hpux, sun doesnt ofter LVM which has the flexibility to extend, configure as required... if i am not wrong, for sun platform, once u configure, there is no way u can reconfigure unless with the option of reslice everything again... and that of course will lose all the data.

please correct me if i am wrong..

thanks

Solstice DiskSuite is available with Sol9x86 (now available).

I don't believe it came packaged with Sol8x86.

And to answer the question, yes, you will lose your data unless you make a backup of it onto tape or whatever means you have. Do not backup to the same disk you are going to format.

A unix admin suggested that if I do not want to lose my data then I can just move my root filesystem to the /export/home slice. I didnt really have anything I needed in export home so what I did was a ufsdump/restore from s0 (root slice) to s7 (/export/home). I then edited the vfstab in the /export/home/etc directory on s7 to point the root filesystem to s7. Then, made a bootblock on s7 with installboot.
My question is, how do I tell the OS to boot off of slice 7 instead of slice 0? I am running Solaris 8 intel.

You didn't lose your data dumping to the same disk since you didn't format (changing the sizes of the partitions). You are attempting to 'get around' the normal way of doing things (not wrong mind you...that is something we all try).

But, the problem is this. You aren't running Solaris 8 on a SUN system which would allow this. You are running X86. And according to SUN, it can't be done.


So you are back to square 1. You can either backup your data to tape, format the drive, and dump the tape back on, OR, reinstall from scratch. I don't believe there are any other choices.

One thing you might try...

IF your swap partition is set up right next to your root partition (on slice 1), you could cut a piece from slice 7 {insure you restored your data first that you put there onto the correct slice [0]} to move swap to. Then you could increase the size of your root partition....all this is dependent on what your partitions look like (please post how you had it set up originally and how it is set up now).