Help moving and managing partitions | Arch Linux Community | Page 1

stray harness Aug 18, 2025, 1:25 PM

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I recently moved my archlinux installation to a larger disk which i had no issues with, and now im trying to expand my partitions.
im currently using gparted which im having some problems with.
im trying to make the unallocated space be usable for both p2 and p3 which is what I need help with

little yarrow Aug 18, 2025, 1:50 PM

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extending p3 to unallocated should be no problem. Note sure about how to extend p2

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I think you'd have to move p3 to the right

stray harness Aug 18, 2025, 1:54 PM

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yea i read that online, but I physically cant, like it doesnt let me

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it only lets me expand and retract from the right

stray harness Aug 18, 2025, 1:54 PM

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stray harness

(this is p3 btw)

little yarrow Aug 18, 2025, 1:55 PM

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is this from a live iso? Or from your arch?

stray harness Aug 18, 2025, 1:55 PM

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from my arch

midnight jolt Aug 18, 2025, 1:55 PM

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stray harness yea i read that online, but I physically cant, like it doesnt let me

run this```
btrfs fi us /home

little yarrow Aug 18, 2025, 1:56 PM

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you need to boot into live iso

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can't move it while you use it

midnight jolt Aug 18, 2025, 1:56 PM

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that yeah, moving needs the filesystem not be mounted

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but shrinking and expanding does not depending on the filesystem

stray harness Aug 18, 2025, 1:57 PM

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alright ill reboot into a live iso

midnight jolt Aug 18, 2025, 1:57 PM

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honestly if you use btrfs, should stick with subvols instead of partitions unless you have a very specific reason

stray harness Aug 18, 2025, 1:57 PM

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im not really familiar with any of this

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how do subvolumes work?

midnight jolt Aug 18, 2025, 1:59 PM

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they are essetially special folders in btrfs that is still part of the same partition/filesystem
that you can also mount with the subvol=/subvol/path mount option

little yarrow Aug 18, 2025, 2:00 PM

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you didn't have to separate / and /home, but it can still be useful. If your system breaks you can just install a new one on / and keep your home

midnight jolt Aug 18, 2025, 2:01 PM

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  ➜ findmnt -t btrfs -o TARGET,SOURCE /dev/nvme0n1p3
TARGET           SOURCE
/                /dev/nvme0n1p3[/@]
/var/log         /dev/nvme0n1p3[/@log]
/swap            /dev/nvme0n1p3[/@swap]
/home            /dev/nvme0n1p3[/@home]
/var/lib/flatpak /dev/nvme0n1p3[/@flatpak]
/.snapshots      /dev/nvme0n1p3[/@.snapshots]

for example

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the /@ subvol is mounted to /
/@home to /home

all are still part of nvme0n1p3

little yarrow Aug 18, 2025, 2:01 PM

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what's the benefit of that?

stray harness Aug 18, 2025, 2:02 PM

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so basically an extension of the partition?

midnight jolt Aug 18, 2025, 2:02 PM

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btrfs snapshots are per subvolume
and for semi-seperation

little yarrow Aug 18, 2025, 2:03 PM

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stray harness so basically an extension of the partition?

look into btrfs snapshots, pretty cool feature of the filesystem

midnight jolt Aug 18, 2025, 2:03 PM

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so if there weren't seperate subvols, you'd be uselessly snapshotting unneeded stuff

stray harness Aug 18, 2025, 2:04 PM

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how do i make a subvol for p2 then?

midnight jolt Aug 18, 2025, 2:08 PM

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btrfs subvol create

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preferably you'd have these at the toplevel

#Help moving and managing partitions