I have always considered Linux to be a bit of a geeky system.

I had hoped that with time, the front end would make things simpler, in the same way that Windows more or less made DOS obsolete. That isn’t the case.

The more I have used it, the more I like it. It is extremely fast, solid and also versatile. It is now my default operating system, so all I have to do is switch on the laptop and leave it to boot up. I only have to hover over the keyboard if I want to go into Windows.

In my last post, I mentioned how I was having problems with reinstalling Linux in a virtual file. I still haven’t solved that problem (despite having put an appeal out on the forums), but am developing a couple of theories. One is that apparently a hard disk can only handle four primary partitions? I had never heard this before but it could be the reason for my problem. My hard disk came with three partitions already set up. There is one small one that has an uncertain function. There is another that contains the factory restore code and then there is the main one which is around 320 Gb in size. My first job was to split that into and OS partition and a Data partition, not realising that I had now used up all my four partitions. Some day, I may restore to the factory default and then leave Windows in one partition and Linux in another.

Because I wasn’t able to reinstall, I had to get by by restoring my Linuxmint directory, and that is what I’m working off at the moment. I was also stuck with the size I had originally specified, which was 19Gb. This filled up pretty rapidly leaving me with a setup that lacked flexibility. I hunted the Internet and came up with a solution. Apparently, Linux is able to increase a file size without recreating it. I did say that Linux was flexible?

I tried it out last night and it worked. Or at least it partly worked. This is what I did.

My NTFS Data partition is the one that hold my Linux install. Linux is mounted in a folder called “linuxmint”, in two main files – “root.disk” and “swap.disk”. I can access these files directly from Linux using the path /host/linuxmint/disks/.

Using Terminal as Root I used the following –

cd /host/linuxmint/disks
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=10240 >> root.disk
e2fsck -f root.disk
resize2fs root.disk

The second line is the one that does the main work. It takes a very long time to run, and it is set to increase the size of root.disk by 10Gb. This can be varied by changing the value of “count”.

My problem now is that “root.disk” is 29Gb in size which is exactly what I intended, but when I examine the properties of any directory in Linux, it tells me that the disk size is still only 19Gb. Somehow i have to work out a solution to this little conundrum.

I will say one more thing in favour of Linux –

It certainly keeps an old man’s brain active!