Debian 11 Cinnamon Install

[Alexzee]

This Debian 11 install is running great no problems.

However it's taking up almost the entire 1 TB HDD and I'd like to resize it to have room for another Linux installation.
If I resize this partition could it have boot issue's or other problems?

 

[wendy-lebaron]

Are you able to boot into this Debian via BIOS? It's beyond me using only an 8MB partition of anything, because to install another Linux OS it's almost a requirement to have at least one 300MB EFI System Partition.

Otherwise resizing that large partition might get its UUID changed. That's what I dislike about GParted, but it might be the tools it uses.

 

[Alexzee]

Are you able to boot into this Debian via BIOS? It's beyond me using only an 8MB partition of anything, because to install another Linux OS it's almost a requirement to have at least one 300MB EFI System Partition.

Otherwise resizing that large partition might get its UUID changed. That's what I dislike about GParted, but it might be the tools it uses.

I don't enter the BIOS at all unless I absolutely have to.

I'm in a triple boot configuration with 3 different drives so I have to adjust things correctly. Grub could get mis-configured or compromised if I'm not well organized in the fstab department.

 

[wizardfromoz]

G'day all

The screenshot begs a few questions, as follows:

1. Is this running under UEFI-GPT? If so, is the ESP on another of your drives?
2. /dev/sda1 has an alert icon beside it, can you click that and tell us what it reveals?
3. Have you loaded a lot of additional software in order to consume 33.23 GiB?

GParted should not change the UUID unless you delete or reformat /dev/sda2. I resized a couple of partitions yesterday.

An alternative to reinstalling or manually resizing is to take an on demand full Timeshift snapshot, first using the Users tab to include all files for /home/your-username and /root.

Then clean or reformat /dev/sda and restore the Timeshift snapshot (you can restore from another drive, as well as resize if you wish).

Cheers

Wiz

 

[Alexzee]

G'day all

The screenshot begs a few questions, as follows:

1. Is this running under UEFI-GPT? If so, is the ESP on another of your drives?
2. /dev/sda1 has an alert icon beside it, can you click that and tell us what it reveals?
3. Have you loaded a lot of additional software in order to consume 33.23 GiB?

GParted should not change the UUID unless you delete or reformat /dev/sda2. I resized a couple of partitions yesterday.

An alternative to reinstalling or manually resizing is to take an on demand full Timeshift snapshot, first using the Users tab to include all files for /home/your-username and /root.

Then clean or reformat /dev/sda and restore the Timeshift snapshot (you can restore from another drive, as well as resize if you wish).

Cheers

Wiz

Yes this is under UEFI.
There is a ESP on the Samsung NVMe drive that Linux Mint 21.1 is installed on.

Thanks for clarifying that G-parted shouldn't change the UUID.
There aren't any plans to delete or reformat /dev/sda2.

See the screenshot of the alert icon:-

 

[wizardfromoz]

Thanks for that.

In that case, I would be inclined to take a Timeshift snapshot, and once taken, hop into one of the other drives and use its GParted to do the resizing of /dev/sda2.

Wiz

 

[wendy-lebaron]

Otherwise resizing that large partition might get its UUID changed. That's what I dislike about GParted, but it might be the tools it uses.

I said this because I have seen it done to "swap" partition of an internal HDD and Debian was driving me crazy unable to find it but insisting on it, and forcing me to rebuild "initramfs" very slowly until I found a way to shut it up. Once I had to do a surgical restoration of a Linux OS installation based on Debian, but the destination disk was smaller than where it came from. So I had to sacrifice the "swap" size by 200MB or so. I was able to boot into that OS but was stuck up an extra 30 seconds during boot until "gave up waiting for resume device" which kept peaking me off.

The UUID was changed on me in another situation where I tried and failed to restore another installation based on Arch. Was forced to do the whole installation from scratch, it sucked, took over 3-1/2 hours and even longer to set up everything again like I wanted.

In the first time I used Clonezilla I didn't do my research so that's how I lost my first installation of Manjaro KDE. So I resolved not to use it again until early this month. Call me crazy...

 

[wizardfromoz]

I don't doubt that you may have had GParted problems.

I can't speak for Swap because I have not used it in about 8 - 9 years.

But on an EXT4 root / partition, GParted will not change the UUID in a resizing exercise - at least not as I have found across my 90 distros.

Alex will let us know if there are issues, and a Timeshift snapshot stored on another drive will safeguard any restoration.

Cheers

Wizard

 

[Alexzee]

Thanks for that.

In that case, I would be inclined to take a Timeshift snapshot, and once taken, hop into one of the other drives and use its GParted to do the resizing of /dev/sda2.

Wiz

You got it-
Timeshift installed and snapshot's of /root and user's taken.

When time permits I'll resize /dev/sda2 in LM 21.1 GParted or Slackware's GParted, thanks, Chris!

I right clicked in Timeshift and copied the snapshot for my Debian 11 install. How can I paste it to my Mint install's /home on the NVMe?

 

[Alexzee]

I haven't forgotten bout this thread.

Got a few fires kindling that I have to work on putting out.