merge / and /home partitions | Arch Linux Community | Page 2

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:25 AM

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From the arch usb, delete your root partition and resize it only as big as it needs to hold the files you need

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Mount the root partition and the home partition, move files over

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Then delete every partition other than that which you recreated to hold the files you need

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:26 AM

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thats what i did already

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my / and /home are all in one partition

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:26 AM

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Well what's the problem

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:26 AM

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the problem is i literally cant boot

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:26 AM

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What happens when you boot

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:27 AM

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when i try booting arch, i just get put into a blank CLI

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:28 AM

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Did you regenerate your grub config after fucking with your partitions?

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:28 AM

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yea

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:29 AM

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So you had chroot'd into your install from the arch USB and ran grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg?

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:29 AM

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i ran this:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:29 AM

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minor compass So you had chroot'd into your install from the arch USB and ran `grub-mkconfig -...

yeah

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exactly

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the guy that was helping me out, he was very persistent but we both just couldnt figure it out

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it was 95% him im going to be real

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he basically just said it'd be easier to just reinstall the OS, while keeping my actual files

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so my /home and whatnot

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:30 AM

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Then do that

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Use the smallest partition possible to hold all the data you need to keep, then reinstall the OS and just ignore that partition

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:31 AM

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could you help me out with that plz

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minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:32 AM

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I can get your data secured in a partition but then at that point you'd just follow the arch install guide

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https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/installation_guide

Installation guide

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:32 AM

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yeah sure

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that would mean alot!

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im in an archiso right now

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:32 AM

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show me the output of lsblk

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:33 AM

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minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:34 AM

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how much data do you need to keep

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how many gigabytes

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:35 AM

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uhhhh

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i couldnt tell you how much exactly

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:35 AM

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Are you trying to save like everything in /home/yourname or /home/yourname/.config or what?

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:36 AM

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in /myname

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my dotfiles are on github

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:37 AM

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mount your p3 partition

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cd into /mnt/home, then run ls -lh

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Should tell you how big your user home directory is

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:39 AM

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minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:40 AM

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what's inside of just /mnt?

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:40 AM

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minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:41 AM

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Oh I see, well it's showing your home directory is 4 kilobytes, cd into /mnt/home/home and make sure your shit is actually in there

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maybe it's kilobits idk one way or the other but nonetheless, that's barely any data

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:42 AM

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minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:42 AM

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Okay, run this on your first (boot) partition and let me know if it complains

mkfs.ext4 /dev/yourbootpartition

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:43 AM

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so just run

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sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p1

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?

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:43 AM

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yep

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:43 AM

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what will this do?

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make filesystem right

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will this wipe my data

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:44 AM

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We're going to convert your existing boot partition into a filesystem we can move your home directory into

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It'll wipe your boot partition but you'll recreate that during the reinstall so it shouldn't matter

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:44 AM

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okay gotcha

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i think thats what the previous guy that was helping me wanted me to do as well

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its saying nvme0n1p1 contains a vfat file system, proceed anyway?

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i hit yes?

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:44 AM

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yep

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:45 AM

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done

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:45 AM

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then mount partition 1 to /mnt/backup or something

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:45 AM

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so make a directory called backup

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so would i do

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:46 AM

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yeah, mkdir /mnt/backup then mount /dev/partition1whatever /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:46 AM

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mkdir /mnt/backup
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/backup

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:46 AM

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yep

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:46 AM

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okay done

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:46 AM

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now copy and paste your /mnt/home/home/marcial directory to the /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:47 AM

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so

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cp -r /mnt/home/home/marcial /mnt/backup

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?

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:47 AM

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yep

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then cd into /mnt/backup and make sure all your shit is there

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:47 AM

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woaah wait

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got a bunch of errors

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:47 AM

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What do they say

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:48 AM

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basically that theres no space

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:48 AM

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run ls on /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:48 AM

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lost + found
marcial

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thats whats there

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:50 AM

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Hm okay we'll just delete the partition and recreate it, presumably it previously being the fat32 boot partition is causing problems

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:50 AM

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alright

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:51 AM

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first unmount /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:51 AM

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done

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:52 AM

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then sudo fdisk /dev/nvme0n1

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once thats up type p just to make sure the first partition there is displayed as the 512mb boot partition

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:53 AM

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done, but i got a warning that the disk is currently in use and that --repartitioning is probably a bad idea

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:53 AM

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that's fine it's because your bigboy partition is still mounted

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:53 AM

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oh okay

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minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:54 AM

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alright, type d to delete partition

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then input 1

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:54 AM

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done

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partition 1 has been deleted

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:55 AM

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alright, now hit n

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should default to partition number 1 but if it doesn't put in 1

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:55 AM

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okay

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:55 AM

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accept defaults for the first and last sectors

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:55 AM

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alright

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:55 AM

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then run p again and take a pic

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:55 AM

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minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:56 AM

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yes

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:56 AM

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oh okay

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minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:56 AM

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alright now put w

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:56 AM

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done

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:56 AM

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then rerun sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p1

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:57 AM

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done

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:57 AM

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okay, now try to remount it to /mnt/backup and copy and paste again

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:57 AM

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same damn thing

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no space left on device blah blah blah

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:58 AM

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Okay then your shit is bigger than 4k and my understanding of ls needs revamped

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go back into fdisk

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:58 AM

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fdisk what

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:58 AM

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same nvme device

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 2:58 AM

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are you sure we should be doing this on p1

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its p3 that has all my files

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 2:59 AM

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You dont fdisk into a partition, you fdisk into a drive

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'/dev/nvme0n1'

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:00 AM

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okay doen

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done

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im fdisked

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:01 AM

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Delete partition 1 and partition 2 then run w

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:01 AM

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how

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d

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nevermind

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i got it

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forgot

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okay done

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:02 AM

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Once you done with that we'll recheck size of your home directory since I'm stupid

run du -sh /mnt/home/home/marcial or whatever your username was

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:03 AM

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2.2g

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:03 AM

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Okay, fdisk into /dev/nvme0n1 again

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:03 AM

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okay

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:04 AM

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partition number 1, first sector default, last sector 3G

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:04 AM

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am i

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:05 AM

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Creating a new partition

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:05 AM

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yes

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making sure

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when i hit 3g i get "value out of range"

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:05 AM

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did you do uppercase

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:05 AM

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yeah

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maybe i do +3G?

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:06 AM

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add a + before

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yeah

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:06 AM

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okay

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done

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:06 AM

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okay, now run w to commit those changes

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:06 AM

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okay

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:06 AM

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then once more run mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p1

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:06 AM

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i unmount first right

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:07 AM

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yeah

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I had forgotten about the whole mounting situation there; assumed it was unmounted

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:07 AM

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got this warning

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:07 AM

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yep just do yes

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:08 AM

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finished with no errors

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do u copy files again

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:08 AM

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Okay, for sanity sake run lsblk again and make sure you now have partition 1 showing as 3G

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:09 AM

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why is it still

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512M

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:09 AM

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dunno, may just still be referencing old data we'll try to mount and move files over anyways

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worst taht'll happen is no space errors

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remoute partition 1 to /mnt/backup and rty to copy over the /mnt/home/home/marcial folder again

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:10 AM

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same thing

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dude im losing my mind

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:10 AM

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huh weird

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try to reboot into arch iso

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then check lsblk again

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:11 AM

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alright

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:11 AM

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oh

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I see why

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fdisk didn't actually make change because the partition was mounted

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:11 AM

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oh well i alr rebooted my archiso

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:12 AM

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well I think it actually did make change but the warnign said you'd need to reboot

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cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:12 AM

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oh okay

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:12 AM

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lsblk should hopefully see 3G now

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:12 AM

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as soon as its done loading ill do lsblk

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yeah

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YES

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its 3g

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okay what is it that i run

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:14 AM

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run lsblk -o PATH,FSTYPE and let me know whether that first partition shows as ext4

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:14 AM

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p1 is ext4

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:15 AM

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okay, try to move over your user home directory again

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you'll need to remount

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maybe recreate the /mnt directories

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:15 AM

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so

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mount nvme0n1p1 /mnt/backup

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:15 AM

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yep

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:16 AM

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it says mount point does not exist

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😕

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:16 AM

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you'll need to recreate the backup directory

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archiso isn't persistent so any directories you make are wiped on reboot

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:16 AM

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so what do i do then

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:17 AM

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mkdir /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:17 AM

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mkdir /mnt/boot

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okay

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:17 AM

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mkdir /mnt/home

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:17 AM

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done

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ill try mounting again

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same error

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:17 AM

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are you doing mount nvme0n1p1 or mount /dev/nvme0n1p1

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:18 AM

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im doing mount nvme0n1p1 /mnt/backup

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:18 AM

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you need the latter, /dev/nvme0n1p1 is the path to that partition

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:18 AM

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okay gotcha

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done

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i ran

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mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/backup

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sorry man this mounting shit gets so confusing to me, i rarely have had to do it

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:19 AM

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okay, run the same thing for p3 to /mnt/home

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:19 AM

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done

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:19 AM

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now try again copying the marcial home folder from /mnt/home to /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:20 AM

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no space left on device

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dude should i just wipe my entire drive and reinstall arch at this point

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that isnt solving the problem but holy shit

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im genuinely losing my mind

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:21 AM

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Yeah idk how / why your home directory is reporting 2.3G but can't be moved onto a partition 3GB in size

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:21 AM

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what to do then

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do we have to move everything over

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:22 AM

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for shits and giggles unmount /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:22 AM

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alr

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:23 AM

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then run mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:23 AM

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already mounted or mount point busy

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is what i got

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:24 AM

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okay I was hoping you could maybe use a piece of that thumbdrive

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Yeah dunno, could try to use fdisk and make that partition bigger to see if that helps

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You have 20GB to work with but whatever the size of the partition ends up being, is how much unusable space you'll have on it after you reinstall arch

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So that's why I was shooting for as small as necessary, since you won't be able to utilize that partition's worth of space after all is said and done

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:26 AM

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but like

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i just dont understand why it doesnt think theres enough space

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maybe we make it 3.1

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then 3.2

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until it works

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lol

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idk

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:27 AM

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I'd go up by a gig at a time

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:27 AM

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alright so what do i do

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fdisk nvme0n1

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right

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and then

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just w

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default start

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and just keep going up and up until it works

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and like lets say i were to make it an absurdly high number

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like 30gb idk

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that space i wont be able to take back?

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:29 AM

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Yeah plus you don't have 30g available

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The available space is 512MB from the original boot partition + 20GB from the original root partition

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:29 AM

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okay gotcha

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so am i deleting the partition and remaking it, im confused sorry

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:30 AM

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Yep

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Delete then remake with a larger size

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Then rerun mkfs ext4 command so it creates a new filesystem that takes up the new partition size

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:31 AM

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its asking if i want to remove the signature

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that it has a ext4 signature

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:35 AM

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Yeah always say yes

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Just FYI you'll need to unmount prior to and remount after mucking with the partition

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If you didn't do it this time around then rebooting the machine again will update everything

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:37 AM

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still no space

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what do you mean unmount and remount though

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so before i mess with it

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i would just do

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:38 AM

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Umount /mnt/backup

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:38 AM

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in this order:

umount /mnt/backup
fdisk the changes
mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt/home
reboot

repeat

minor compass Dec 23, 2023, 3:38 AM

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Idk what's goin on there though maybe toss something in #quick-questions

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Say you're trying to make a partition to backup data into but you're getting no space even though the partition is bigger than the directory

cold sapphire Dec 23, 2023, 3:40 AM

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will do

#merge / and /home partitions