Increase Linux partition with unused Windows partition space on dualbooot system

Question

I have a dualboot system with fedora 27 and windows 10. I am running out of space on my linux volume group (i.e. partition) and I don't have unallocated space. I've read that I might need Gparted and that maybe resize2fs can be used to increase a linux partition (reference 1, reference 2) but all those cases were dealing with extending the root partition where unallocated space already exists.

Output of df -h

Filesystem               Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs                 3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /dev
tmpfs                    3.9G  192M  3.7G   5% /dev/shm
tmpfs                    3.9G  2.0M  3.9G   1% /run
tmpfs                    3.9G     0  3.9G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mapper/fedora-root   43G   32G  8.1G  80% /
tmpfs                    3.9G   14M  3.9G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda5                976M  196M  713M  22% /boot
tmpfs                    789M   16K  789M   1% /run/user/42
tmpfs                    789M   11M  778M   2% /run/user/1000
tmpfs                    789M     0  789M   0% /run/user/0

and ouput of fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xb72b0508

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048   1026047   1024000   500M  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2         1026048 395909025 394882978 188.3G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       498311168 500113407   1802240   880M 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda4       395909120 498311167 102402048  48.8G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       395911168 398008319   2097152     1G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6       398010368 498311167 100300800  47.8G 8e Linux LVM

Partition table entries are not in disk order.


Disk /dev/mapper/fedora-root: 43 GiB, 46103789568 bytes, 90046464 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/mapper/fedora-swap: 4.9 GiB, 5247074304 bytes, 10248192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

My partitions are:

Windows 10 has 80 GB of free space. I want to take 70 GB from Windows and give it to fedora. How do I do this without losing either or both of my operating systems and any data? Can I shrink windows first to create unlocated space or should I create a partition of 70 GB inside the windows partition? If so can I do this inside windows else if I have to use Gparted can I download it to my external hard drive which contains other files or is a blank memory stick necessary?

My linux partition was created in windows before installing fedora using rufus and I have roughly 5 GB of swap. If possible I would also like to increase the size of the swap to match my RAM size because I find my system tends to use up all of my swap partition.

Answer 1

You can reduce windows partition C which has 80G free, using the windows disk manager itself.

Once done, you won't be able I think to add the newly unallocated space to your LVM, but you can create some new partition(s) that you could then mount in your Linux to hold data on specific mount-point(s) (/home or whatever).

Answer 2

I ended up using the terminal but before that I used GParted live to shrink the windows partition to create unallocated space. The problem with GParted was that after adding this unallocated space to the extended partition, my boot partition was in between this new space and my logical volume group, so I switched to command line which is easier to use.

Here's what I did:

Before switching to the terminal I first of all converted the unallocated space to a partition named /dev/sda7. I did this in GParted and chose ext4.

Now keep in mind that the following works only for lvm.

1. Created physical volume

   pvcreate /dev/sda7
   

2. Extended volume group to make use of this physical volume

   vgextend fedora /dev/sda7
   

   Note: I found my volume group name by running the command: vgdisplay. vgs also works.

3. Activated logical volume to make it available in order for file system check and resizing to work.

   lvchange -ay /fedora/root
   

   OR

   vgchange -ay
   

   The -a option stands for activate and -y means on all existing devices, so it looks everywhere.

4. I performed a file system check to make sure there were no errors. This actually found some errors and fixed it.

   e2fsck /dev/fedora/root
   

5. Resized the file system

   resize2fs -l 100%FREE /dev/fedora/root
   

   If you want to increase the size by an absolute number like 50 GB then use the -L option.

6. Again performed another file system check to fix any errors

   e2fsck /dev/fedora/root
   

   You can now check that your root has been enlarged by running lsblk or similar commands which show partitions.

After this, I also increased my swap logical volume by well over 50%, and it was just as easy although steps are slightly different, for example there is no need for e2fsck since that only works for ext 2, 3, 4 file systems.