I was editing my disk and when i wrote the changes and exited cfdisk, no cli command worked. Thats when i realized that im f-ed up.
This what happened:
I have 3 partitions, 512M efi, a 100G root partition and some free (unallocated) space. I had 84G worth data in the root patition. I totally forgot that and shrinked the root partition to 32G to extend the free space. I was using cfdisk tool for this. I wrote the changes and rebooted my machine, by long pressing power button coz no cli commands worked after writing those chrnges, to see this.
So is it possible to recover my machine now?
:_ )
SOLUTION
Thanks to @[email protected].
cfdisk just updates the partition table. So no worry about data damage . To fix this, live boot -> resize the partition back its original size -> fsck that partition. For more explanation, refer @[email protected] comment
There’s something to know in the future, which others don’t seem to have mentioned. Resizing a partition is 2 steps: resizing the filesystem, and resizing the partition.
When shrinking, you first resize the filesystem, and with this you make sure that the filesystem does not want to use data outside of the wanted shrinked size. If that not possible because you don’t have enough free space, the shrink operation should tell that. After shrinking is done, you can continue with changing the partition table, to actually resize the partition.
When expanding you first expand the partition (so that the fs will have room to expand to), and then expand the filesystem.
If you’re familiar with partitioning from the tools of microsoft windows, it’s disk manager does the 2 steps without you noticing. This is just how most graphical partition managers work.
But it’s important to be aware that the partition and the filesystem is not one and the same object. The filesystem resides in the partition like your feet does in your shoes, and the beginning of the partition helps for the system to find the beginning of the file system, which must end at the partition’s end (or before that, but that’s not efficient).
If you prefer graphical partition managers (I do too, it’s much easier), Linux has a few of them. I recommend you to use GParted. It’s a Linux based pendrive-bootable partition editor. They have an official live image, but I would recommend using the SystemRescue system (a live system too), which includes that and many other tools.
In this case, that the problem had already happened, it may or may not be easier to use this.
Excellent explanation - I might use your “feet in shoes” analogy in the future
GParted has solved so many things over the years… my data, my reputation… maybe even my job on 1 occasion.
Instructions unclear, toes sticking out front of shoes.